I thought the story was interesting but the writing and casting was bad. It was too ambitious maybe. It seems like the film makers wanted to shine a light on the lack of attention from the media and the police when black girls and women go missing. In fact, they shared some staggering stats at the end of movie.
But they also wanted to tell the story about the abduction. Their compromise was to try to do both. But they ran out of time. They ended up sacrificing character development, which would have resulted in better performances, if they had the right cast.
Unfortunately, I could not connect with any one of actors: the victims, the police, the perp, the fam. But I was not the only one with this problem. The fam had no connection with each other. It seemed the mother and daughter were very distant during the "party". I thought maybe there was some backstory there. The father was like an after thought. He was very distant from his wife. I am not sure about the relationship between the grand-mom and the mom. Are they mother and daughter or Is grand-mom the husband's mom? I thought there was some conflict between her and the mom.
What about the random kids? Who did they belong to? The two black police women - what was up with them? What happened to the witness who seemed to care so much about the abducted girl?
The police in general was depicted as bias and inept, which they probably were, but I noticed that there were only a few shown -maybe about 10, which for a PD in Philadelphia is not realistic.
In conclusion, all performances were bad. That is unfortunate because I have liked the lead actress Rielle Downs in past roles. So I rated this movie a bit higher because I think she tried.
