Liz Garbus is a distinguished American documentary filmmaker (nominated for an Oscar for the films What Happened Miss Simone? and The Farm: Angola, USA) who decided to make her first feature film as well. However, “Lost Girls” is definitely not one of those movies that will be remembered for a long time, and somehow I have the impression that she would not have gone far wrong if she had also recorded this story of a serial killer from Long Island as a documentary. All of this seems to me to have been filmed somewhat ziherically, according to the textbook, as if it were an episode of a television series like New York Blues or as if it were a Netflix original movie, which “Lost Girls” actually is. This story is based on true events, and at its center is a single mother, Mari Gilbert (Amy Ryan), whose prostitute daughter has disappeared.
After the police do their work unimaginably sloppily and extremely disinterestedly (you won’t find a missing prostitute!), mom will take matters into her own hands and start an investigation that will yield results very quickly. In the place where her daughter was last seen, the remains of several girls will soon be found, who will also be found to have been prostitutes. Although by now it will probably be clear to everyone that some serial killer has been roaming Long Island for a long time and stalking prostitutes, the police will not be overly zealous even then. Mari, a single mother and woman with many problems of her own, will gather around her other women whose daughters or sisters were found murdered on New York’s Long Island and throw herself into the investigation.