Low-key and frank about Mari's failings, the movie has no interest in sensationalizing the daughter's life and fate. It is a mystery, but also a rich portrait of life in gloomy, working-class Long Island.

| Jul 30, 2020

Luckily, [Liz] Garbus' direction helps keep the visible parts of the film compelling.

| Mar 16, 2020

By veering into the humanity of this story, Garbus is able to express the horror without getting too ghoulish.

| Mar 14, 2020

Garbus brings off something extraordinary in a film that sets out to leave us sad, enraged, and profoundly unsatisfied. Lost Girls makes us want to rethink our need for a certain kind of closure in a world that has so little of it.

| Mar 13, 2020

It is a story without a happy ending, or even an ending at all. But Garbus isn't so naive or precious a storyteller to expect reality to afford one - and she should be applauded for not waiting around in vain.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2020

A story that works much better if you do a Google search before watching it, not after, since it offers a lot of convenient human truths, but not enough hard facts.

| Mar 12, 2020

"Lost Girls" hits hard.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2020

It's serious, respectful, gravely melancholic. Yet anger best describes the movie's atmosphere, its overall mood and its authorial tone.

| Mar 11, 2020

All told, "Lost Girls" succeeds in humanizing a grisly news story, but it makes for less than satisfying viewing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 11, 2020

What's both intriguing and frustrating about the screen version, however, is the way that it flirts with a much thornier and potentially richer possibility, only to ultimately back away from that idea in favor of a straightforward plea for justice.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 11, 2020

At 95 minutes, Lost Girls is sorely lacking and, ironically, one wonders what a Garbus docuseries could have found instead.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 10, 2020

An emotional examination of one of the most famous unsolved cases of the modern era.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 30, 2020

Lost Girls has its missteps but is elevated by impressive craft, a sense of harrowing anxiety, and the searing performances on display.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 29, 2020

The intention to show how the justice system failed these forgotten women is honorable, but the dramatic execution is lacking.

| Jan 29, 2020

Kolker himself has compared his book to writing about the maiden voyage of the Titanic - everyone knows how it ends, the trick is making people care about how it gets there - and Garbus mostly succeeds in keeping up that unique tension.

| Original Score: B | Jan 29, 2020

A haunted and doggedly original drama that shakes off easy categorizations.

| Jan 29, 2020