A “found footage” movie called “Amber Alert” came out in 2012. It had a pretty cool premise, but a fairly sloppy presentation (common with found footage projects). A group of kids hear an Amber Alert and spot the car on the highway. They give chase, leading to all kinds of improbable twists and turns and behavior that makes no sense, all “captured’ by the cell phone cameras. The main thing I recall about “Amber Alert” is how everyone yelled all the time. The characters bickered from start to finish, and it felt chaotic and unformed. Now, here we are, in 2024, with another movie with the same title and scenario. They’re basically the same film, although the recent one ditches the found footage approach. Kerry Bellessa directed both films. As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”
Circling back to remake a film you initially shot 12 years ago is an interesting idea. But has anything improved? There are so many stories in the world. Why tell this one twice? The 2012 film was clearly shot on a microbudget, and the found footage aspect came with all the typical problems of the “genre.” The 2024 version is more streamlined and polished, the acting is much better, and in a way, it’s an easier watch, even with its absurd final sequence. The setup is a little complicated, but it goes as follows:
An 8-year-old girl named Charlotte vanishes from the park while playing a game of hide and seek with her brother. The mother panics. She was taking videos of her baby and gets a glimpse in the background of her daughter standing next to a black car. She immediately calls the police. Meanwhile, a young woman named Jaq (Hayden Panettiere) flags down an off-duty rideshare. She’s running late and desperate. The driver, Shane (Tyler James Williams), is due home for his son’s birthday but agrees to take her since it’s on his way. They both get the Amber Alert on their phone and a couple of minutes later, they think they see the car. They call the police and then basically chase the car wherever it goes.
It’s a gripping setup, and Panettiere and Williams create believable chemistry out of casual chit-chat. Shane doesn’t want to get involved in chasing the Amber Alert car but is convinced by Jaq’s passion and urgency. The police are overwhelmed by the tips coming in (including Jaq and Shane’s) and end up supporting the two sleuths, basically doing their job for them.
Saidah Arrika Ekulona makes a huge impression as the dispatcher who takes the initial call. She convinces the Sergeant (Kevin Dunn) they need to put out an Amber Alert, even though they have no license plate and the car is a Camry (needle in a haystack territory). Once Jaq and Shane’s journey takes over, Ekulona mostly vanishes from the film, and the film misses her perspective. There are quite a few good “dispatcher” movies (with 2018’s “The Guilty,” directed by Gustav Möller, the clear winner). Ekulona is mostly alone on her phone, and her urgency and competence hold the screen. The dispatcher lives in the real world. Jaq and Shane are clearly in a movie. They both come with backstories, presumably making them even more empathetic to the missing girl’s plight. All of this is unnecessary and drags “Amber Alert” down. We don’t need to hear about Jaq’s past to “understand” why she cares about the missing girl.
The film has a propulsive rhythm, and cinematographer Luka Bazeli occasionally uses drone shots to highlight the car’s smallness and the impossibility of the search. (Drone shots can be effective, but sometimes I miss old-fashioned helicopter shots, which give reality and humanity to the action onscreen. “Dog Day Afternoon” with drone shots instead of hovering helicopters would not be the same film.)
“Amber Alert” is supposedly about the amber alert system (a couple of title cards show up at the end, detailing the history of the system and how many children it has saved). The film can’t keep itself from becoming an episode of “Criminal Minds” in its final sequence. Jaq and Shane take insane risks, and their behavior is often incomprehensible. The overall feeling is not true peril but obligatory checking off the “thriller” boxes. Once the final showdown commences, it’s strictly from the playbook. “Amber Alert” sometimes works as a thriller, but it has serious aspirations. It wants to “say” something. These two things don’t come together.
