Very, very difficult to write this one up without a ton of unproven personal assumptions about director Michael Goi. There are a number of red flags that go up when one watches Megan is Missing, however:

- The presentation of the film as "educational" by its director and producers is plainly dishonest. This is pure exploitation and the thought of showing this film to a kid is abhorrent. The fact that the bonus materials include a snippet from Marc Klaas and a mini-doc about the filming in which the three principal leads try to justify the content don't help dispel that notion at all.

- The extremely poor quality production from an established film industry professional (Goi is a well-known cinematographer with a lengthy CV) is shocking. As is the week-long production schedule. This is shot like it's something being done in a hurry, by someone who doesn't want to get caught doing it.

- The depiction of underage sexual activity, both in act and in description, go way, way beyond what is required for the narrative. This is Victor Salva-level unnecessary prurient interest.

- For such a careless production, the actors cast are disturbingly young-looking and believably portraying characters in physical appearance that are barely 14 years old. IMDB confirms that one actor was (barely) 18 at the time of filming; the other is hard to tell.

- The BDSM imagery is clearly derived from someone who is very familiar with what that looks like.

I am going to refrain from saying publicly what I really want to say about Michael Goi. I don't have proof and even as an anonymous, low-profile voice in a low-traffic corner of the internet I have a responsibility to not spread information if there's a chance of it being inaccurate. I will unequivocally say, however, that I would not personally leave a minor in the care of Michael Goi.

All of this makes the film an incredibly sordid experience that has little to do with its content and more to do with the motivation of who's making it. In a film with even a slight degree of artistic merit, I would remark on the effectiveness of the absolutely repellent still photos that are used to assault the viewer at the beginning of the third act, as well as the horrific sequence where a young girl is stuffed into a plastic barrel alongside the decaying corpse of her best friend. But this isn't art, and it comes across more like reading the private notes of a serial killer, the content disturbing not because of the intent for someone consuming it but because of who it's coming from.

The temptation is to laugh this off because of how fucking bad it is. The view of what teenagers is like is something out of a Facebook thread on Tide pods, and there is a scene which is literally a man digging a hole in real time. The acting is awful, the product of an entire roster of first-time performers, all of whom have little to no film credits after this. The script is the embodiment of all of the worst impulses of shitty found footage. That all just makes it worse. You realize that the shocking moments are not shocking because the filmmaker is good at scaring people. You think after viewing about why on earth anyone would ask two amateur performers to do an extended rape scene. You are struck by the incredibly graphic treatment of adolescent sexuality being present without any sort of narrative purpose in mind.

Why go to the lengths that Michael Goi does to hide the purpose of this film? Why even make that effort? How does a man with a list of film credits as long as my arm make something so unintentionally amateurish? There aren't any definitive answers to these questions, but those that are familiar with the dark shape of the iceberg underneath the public accusations being continually made against Hollywood figures likely have some ideas as to what the answers may be. You could ask Goi I guess, but he's already proven himself dishonest about his intentions.

This leaves the same sickly feeling in my guts as internet videos of cartel murders. Something is deeply wrong here, and even as an enthusiast of extreme cinema I didn't need this rattling around in my head.