Last month’s Lifetime film, I am Your Biggest Fan, focused exclusively on an abduction. This month’s pick, The Boy Who Vanished, explores the same kind of crime, albeit with a focus on the aftermath.
Writer Ken Miyamoto tosses the audience in the deep end right from the start. The film opens at night as a teen boy (Aiden Howard, It’s A Wonderful Knife) walks up to a payphone and calls the police, identifying himself as kidnapping victim Jack Reese.
It’s not until we’ve gone through the morning routine of Haley (Tegan Moss) and Richard (Matthew Kevin Anderson) that the couple’s connection to Jack becomes evident. They seem mildly overprotective of their young, pre-teen son Tyler (Kingston Goodjohn) and for good reason: when Haley and Richard meet with Detective Doyle (Vincent Ross) at the police station, it is revealed that Jack is their son…and he’s been missing for twelve years.
The question at the center of The Boy Who Vanished is whether Jack is who he says he is. The teen is quick to anger and reacts aggressively when either parent tries to touch him, but they both recognize that he’s experiencing PTSD and needs therapy. An early red flag occurs when Jack doesn’t recognize their neighbourhood or his room, but Richard’s dialogue clarifies that the family moved and this is a different house from the one Jack grew up in.
Still, the teen boy does exhibit other strange behaviour, including his immediate request for a cell phone (Richard even questions why, noting that Jack “doesn’t have any friends”.) And who is the teen calling late at night that requires him to covertly sneak out of the house?
Miyamoto is good at doling out enough mystery to insinuate that there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Thankfully this isn’t a simple grifter mystery; an early line of dialogue suggests that Haley and Richard are also keeping something from their son, which complicates the mystery further.
Then there are the two odd, threatening characters – Luna (Maia Michaels) and Travis (Gord Pankhurst) – who keep turning up. Their clothing and hair codifies them as threatening, particularly to an affluent WASPy couple like the Reese family, and they spend the film either spying from their grey van or confronting Haley and Richard in parking lots where they comment on their wealth and privilege.
Also in the mix is Haley’s brother Michael (Jesse Moss, Ginger Snaps). He was a person of interest in Jack’s abduction back in the day due to his struggles with addiction. In the present, Michael combatively tells his sister that he’s clean, but she doesn’t full trust him because he’s living on the margins of society in an RV park (see: aforementioned WASP comment).
The story has a lot of moving parts, but director Christie Will Wolf shoots the film in a matter of fact way that doesn’t overcomplicate the proceedings. It’s that familiar Lifetime visual aesthetic, but The Boy Who Vanished treats even its most ludicrous developments as simple plot beats in a mystery. In fact, the tone is much more thoughtful and emotional than other, more histrionic, Lifetime films.
It helps that the vast majority of the film is grounded in the family drama between Jack, Haley, and Richard. Moss has no difficulty portraying the doting mother: Haley is immediately convinced of Jack’s authenticity and she is desperate to repair their fractured relationship, be it via gifts or acquiescing to all of his demands.
Kevin Anderson’s Richard is less certain (at least initially). It’s clear that the patriarch wants to believe the teen, but Richard maintains a slight distance, even when Jack makes efforts to learn about his job as the CO of a wealth management firm.
Howard is undeniably the lead of the film and he does a expert job of straddling the line between earnest and duplicitous. That’s important not just for the mystery, but for believably selling some of the character’s more innocuous reactions to everyday life.
Jack is, in many ways, a conventional teenage boy – albeit one with a bizarre and sensational story that immediately makes him front page news. Still, his interest in Summer (Grace Beedle), a hot, sensitive girl he runs into at school, confirms that his primary interest is regaining a sense of normalcy and avoiding the media frenzy that follows him everywhere.
Summer is a totem of what Jack’s life could be had he not been kidnapped: in another life, Jack would just be a normal guy dating an attractive, supportive girlfriend who inspires him to open up. Alas, Summer – along with many of the supporting cast, including Tyler, Michael and Luna – are not really characters so much as pawns that either advance the narrative or offer insight into Jack.
It’s the mystery that’s front and center, though, so thankfully The Boy Who Vanished doesn’t wait until its climax to expose the truth. While some elements are telegraphed early, Miyamoto has a few additional cards up their sleeve that make the final reveal worth the wait.
The Boy Who Vanished isn’t revolutionary, but between the emotional family drama and the teasing mystery, complete with red herrings, it’s a ride worth taking.
The Boy Who Vanished aired on Lifetime Movie Network June 15.