The Disappearance

Anthony Sullivan follows his police investigator grandpa Henry Sullivan (Peter Coyote)'s advice to take photos of his neighborhood for a school project. He even breaks into a home and stumbles upon something. His snooping gets him in trouble at school. His parents Luke and Helen are getting a divorce. It's his 10th birthday. He's following Henry's birthday treasure hunt and goes missing. The show jumps two year ahead and he's still missing.

I like the start. It's a standard missing kid show but it's done well at the beginning. There are good actors. It's only six episodes but even with that, the plot deteriorates. It should be a lot simpler considering its limited run. It's still a worthwhile watch but it's not exceptional in any way.

This was a great show until the 3rd episode. It seemed to me like everyone, the writers, the director and the actors just ran out of gas and went through the motions from there on. Peter Coyote appeared to be reading his lines from a teleprompter and the rest of the cast disappeared. I don't know what happened but I just totally lost interest and really didn't care what happened in the end. Usually a show is either good or bad from the very start but disappearance had one good half and one bad. That does not make for a good product.

Oh Peter Coyote, what a dog of a performance you gave in The Disappearance. Micheline Lanctôt's character was useless. Neil Napier wasn't even trying. And then there's poor Anthony, played by Michael Riendeau-a messed up little boy at the beginning of the film, a messed up little boy at then end of the film. Add a splash of sexual sacrifice, a smidgen of 'almost incest' and way too many convenient subplots that miraculously solve themselves; and this could almost be a Lifetime movie(the armpit hair of the film industry). Wasted efforts all around-enough for everyone.

I had already watched the French series and enjoyed it, so was looking forward to watching this. I'm sure I would have liked it, but I had to turn it off after about 20 minutes, the back ground music was way too loud so much so that sometimes it was difficult to hear what the characters were saying. I get that sometimes background music is necessary to build tension etc but not to that extent.

I watched this, at the beginning, only for Aden Turner as I was a fan of his when he was in Rectify. After the first episode I was hooked. Being a fan of mystery thrillers, this was right up my alley. So many twists and turns. Soon I realized that this was a Canadian production based on the original French show. Well done! I now only hope I can purchase this on DVD so I can watch it again. I am sure I missed some subtle things. Thanks all for this series!