The folks out at Anchor Bay sent over a copy of Megan is Missing for us to review, and if you’ve got kids, you need to see this one. Though by the time you’re done, you’re going to probably regret you saw it.

Megan is Missing is horror for the parents out there, as fourteen year old Megan Stewart goes missing one day. Her thirteen year old friend Amy Herman vanishes just three weeks after Megan did, and what we see here is a reconstruction of the period immediately before and after their disappearance using a variety of sources, including home video, web files, and assorted other things.

What follows is eighty five minutes of bizarrity and horror as we watch what amounts to kids gone wild. The thought that this could be happening right now will likely shock most anyone, especially if you’ve got kids. In fact, if you’ve got kids–especially thirteen year olds like those that are apparently all over this movie–it’s probably going to prevent you from sleeping at night for a good long time to come.

It’s like I’ve always said: the scariest stuff is that which is the most likely to happen, and the events you witness here are not only absolutely plausible, but if as true as the movie suggests, they’re scarier than most any undead juggernaut with a machete could ever hope to be.

Of course, from here, you’re now left with a distinct issue. Do you watch this or not? It’s slowly paced, awkward in spots, and downright painful to watch in others. Some might say it’s important for kids to watch, yet at the same time they’ve got this huge warning stamped on the back about how it’s got “scenes of drug use, sexual assault and frank language and not intended for persons under the age of eighteen”. And yet, it’s those same “persons under the age of eighteen” that this is geared to protect. There’s also a lot of commentary in here on the media, which is somewhat out of place given what’s going on.

In fact, the final twenty minutes or so of this movie are quite thoroughly beyond most anything you’ve seen lately, and that’s not a good thing, either. It’s utterly beyond disturbing. It’s downright painful to watch. It may well be the most horrendous and repulsive thing I’ve ever witnessed.

So in turn, the Screenhead Ten Scale does about the only thing it can rationally do and hands Megan is Missing a five out of ten. The difference is split. It’s vile, but likely necessary. It’s disturbing, but important. It’s the root canal of movies. It’s a prostate exam in a DVD case. It’s going to be an education in most every sense of the word and will terrify most anyone with children…or without. Subject yourself to this horror at your own risk, but you may not be able to live without it.