It does happen a lot. In reality, hundreds if not thousands of people turn up missing very year, but it seems like the media mainly concentrates on the story if the missing person is young and cute. The attractive females always seem to get the most attention, by far. There's clearly a reason for this, and the media knows it. Sex sells.

That's just one of the points made in the new film Megan Is Missing, a story that's told with a variety of techniques, including web-chat cameras, cell-phone video chats and simulated news footage to give it a realistic feel, a la The Blair Witch Project. It's about 2 teenage girls who disappear within weeks of each other. Although it's a fictional film, it's based on real life incidents. And as a movie, it ranges from funny, sad, emotionally poignant to downright chilling, and yet it's consistently fascinating to watch. I couldn't turn away, although there were times I wish I had.

The film stars beautiful young actresses Rachel Quinn as Megan and Amber Perkins as her best friend Amy. We're instantly drawn to them because they're young and pretty, but it's their believable performances that give the film its strength. It's not hard to believe that this story could be real. And that's what makes it so effective.

Megan is a popular girl in school, and she's a typical girl for her age in that she experiments with drugs and has sex with boys, partly to retain her social status, and partly to take her mind off her troubled life. She was molested by her stepfather when she was younger and she hates her mom. At times she wishes she could just leave and start a new life.

By contrast, her friend Amy is a sweet, nice girl with loving parents, but she also suffers from extremely low self-esteem. She's still a virgin, and probably has never had a boyfriend. She doesn't do drugs and the other girls think she's a square and don't like her. She seems to be the complete opposite of Megan, but that doesn't stop the two from hanging out constantly. The two are proverbial BFFs.

One day, one of Megan's friends tells her about a guy she's met online named Josh. The picture she sends Megan is of a good-looking guy who skateboards. Megan chats with him online (she can't see him because his webcam is broken) and the 2 make arrangements to hook up. And then Megan vanishes.

Eventually surveillance camera footage is released to the media showing Megan being grabbed in a parking lot. And this causes Amy to suspect that this new Josh boy may have something to do with it. She takes her suspicions to the police. That's when things really get out of hand.

I'm not going to give away too much because this is a real movie and not a traditional GIMP film, but I will say there's bondage, humiliation, a rape scene, implied torture and one disturbingly long sequence that I won't forget any time soon. Be warned, though, this is not exploitation by any means; hardcore GIMPers may not be turned on by what they see. In fact, it's more horrifying because of what it doesn't show than it might be if it showered us with titillating images. It might even make you stop and take pause next time you see one of those missing person stories on the TV or the Internet. It did me.