Netflix's latest original offering gives a glimpse into the lives of the poor and the injustices that go with it

Gabriel Byrne and Amy Ryan in Lost Girls. NETFLIX

Social distancing and staycations present opportunities for film lovers with the various streaming services available to the homebound. Lost Girls is one of the latest original films Netflix has to offer this month. It's directed by Liz Garbus and stars Amy Ryan, Thomasin McKenzie, Oona Laurence, Dean Winters and Gabriel Byrne. While it isn't perfect, the movie is still worth your time especially if you're in the mood for crime drama and detective story with quite heavy subject matter.

Based upon the book of the same name by Robert Kolker on the true crime story of a Long Island serial killer and the missing of a number of American girls in 2010. As the story unfolds, the focus is on a mother and her struggle to find a missing daughter.

Ryan plays Mari Gilbert, a mother who takes matters into her own hands and participates in the investigation of her daughter when the police are slow to react. Her actions lead to national attention and force law enforcement and the media to uncover more than a dozen unsolved murders of young women in a Long Island community.

Lost Girls will remind you of David Fincher's 2007 Thriller Zodiac where it's about the crime with the killer is still on the loose, or Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017 about the mother who fights and protests against police officials.

As the majority of Liz Garbus's previous work are documentaries that follow a similar thread -- crime stories with some really dark themes, Lost Girls does indeed have that look and feel although it moves as a narrative.

The director does a nice job in keeping us guessing as the plot unfolds. There were times when it seemed to be a typical serial-killer movie, and there were times when it seemed to be about government corruption and coverups. I also like that they interspersed real news footage from actual events. It just adds to the genuine story that's being told. Especially the scene towards the end when we get to see the real family, it reinforces the fact that this isn't just a film.

Lost Girls. Photos © NETFLIX

While the overall performances are strong, the characters are somewhat one dimensional. For example, Ryan's mother character is angry. She's angry at the situation and everyone else -- her daughter, co-workers, the police. Byrne's character is a burned-out cop who seems to care about the case, but ends up doing nothing about it. So while I sympathise with the characters I never was able to empathise with them as they felt more like character archetypes than actual people.

The movie is surely a slow burn. At an hour and 35 minutes, I expected the pace to be a little quicker, but it's slightly off. It doesn't jump straight into key story elements, and as the story was revealed I felt quite unsatisfied. When the film's credits roll you feel like it doesn't have a conclusive ending and could have been better. You don't get the he outcome from the story that you wish for. But despite all that, Lost Girls is worth a watch, because the film shines a light on the injustices that inflict a certain group of people, solely because they're in a lower income bracket.