Director Brian Goodman’s film Last Seen Alive 2022 is an exasperating chase against time to find Will Spann’s missing wife through the criminal underbelly of a town in the middle of nowhere. This film commences with a startling premise of kidnapping with a prime suspect in custody confessing to the heinous crime of possible murder. The film is a linear narrative with the clear objective of finding Lisa, Will Spann’s wife.
The two protagonists’ journeys are parallel to each other who sought for answers when they employ their independent means of sleuthing to intersect at the exact location as the missing victim and events unveil a very different truth. With a fallacious assumption from the beginning, we experience the tipping of the scales when Detective Paterson meets Will Spann, who reports his wife missing as a mere indulgence to depict no criminal tendencies. Let us understand how Lisa’s mysterious disappearance brings two men together to find Lisa and reaffirm Will’s wolf instinct.
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Last Seen Alive (2022) Movie Plot Summary & Synopsis:
Will and Lisa Spann: The Couple Experiencing Marital Turmoil
Will Spann (portrayed by Gerard Butler) is a decorated and well-to-do real estate developer with a large estate and a beautiful wife, Lisa (portrayed by Jaimie Alexander), by his side to conquer the world. Though the world sees them as a harmonious couple, Lisa is experiencing an inner turmoil that is now spinning out of control. With questions rising to the surface and anxieties running high, she calmly explains to her husband that distance from the marriage is the only solution to correct course. Will is vehemently in disagreement but makes an exception this one time after his wife already cheated on him once months ago.
It is 9.30 am, and Will Spann is sitting in the car with his wife, Lisa. They are on the way to her parent’s place with the mutual agreement between the two that her stay with them is only for a couple of days before she decides whether to continue staying married to him or not. With their marriage in disarray, Will is unsettled about whether this should end. Expressing his doubt with conviction that there is room to work around this, his car is running low on fuel just before they reach her parent’s house. They must stop at a gas station before they hit the road again.
While forgiveness is on his mind and heart, he makes it known to her that there is a way out of this if she just takes his hand. Even after she has let go of her past association with Clint, her most recent affair, Lisa confronts her inner fight response when she sees his message on her phone as she visits the bathroom at a gas station. Lisa has demons to conquer and constantly doubts whether she is safe. When Lisa steps out of the grocery store at the gas station, she sees someone she knows and talks to him. A truck passes by the same gas station and stops. Suddenly, Lisa goes missing. Her nightmares are about to become a reality when a certain acquaintance at a gas station changes her life forever, and the one person she is running away from comes to her rescue.
What does Detective Paterson do to help Will Spann?
When Lisa goes missing from the gas station, Will is fully aware of his duty to find her. Will follows protocol and calls 911 to report a missing person after speaking with Oscar, the store owner at the Gas station, who blatantly lies about seeing her at the counter in the store. Common knowledge of staggeringly high statistics regarding missing persons digs at Will’s building anxiety levels. The first 24 hours prove crucial to finding Lisa. Will seeks to conquer the odds and do everything he can to get to her no matter the cost. At the 911 center, Detective Roy Paterson (portrayed by Russel Hornsby) takes Will’s call and promises to follow up on the case in person.
Paterson shows up on the scene an hour and a half later at 11 am, and Will identifies him. Will is close to the edge with Paterson’s questions. Paterson walks into the store to speak with Oscar, the shop owner and a well-known acquaintance from the area. He questions him regarding Lisa. Oscar denies the Detective the ability to check the CCTV footage, claiming it’s not working. After interrogating Oscar, Paterson decides to put out an APB (a broadcast alert from one police station to all others with instructions to arrest a particular suspect or person) regarding Lisa and requests Will to give his statement. Will refuses and decides to stay back. His mind is working faster than the Detective’s, and if he stands alone, he moves faster.
A couple of minutes later, Will shows up at the station with a CPU that has stored memory of the CCTV camera footage of the front of the store at the gas station. Paterson is taken aback by Will’s initiative to keep going despite being told to stand down. They plug in the system to find out that when Lisa steps out of the store, she begins to talk to someone and then follows him towards a car to disappear when a truck blocks the view of the CCTV camera. The first lead in the case. Will and Paterson feel a sense of relief.
Paterson grabs his chance to interrogate Will before continuing his investigation. After seeing Lisa go off with an unknown person, Paterson sits Will down to ask him questions crucial to Lisa’s survival over the next few hours. When Paterson asks if Lisa Spann is insured with Life Insurance with Will gaining to earn millions if she dies, Paterson works his investigation on a different parallel after assuming Will to be a possible prime suspect.
With Paterson’s suspicions about Will slowly rising, Paterson goes back to the store to find out that Oscar has left for the day. With a warning to the person behind the counter, he moves back to the station to investigate Lisa’s computer. When Paterson receives a call about Will running off into the woods, he is baffled. Nothing makes sense. But he fully understands this is not a man who will give up. With the Police Department having identified who Lisa spoke with last, they discover a man in the boot of Will’s car tied up with duct tape. He is identified and questioned by Detective Paterson. His name is Pete’ Knuckles’ Daniels. We return to the prologue sequence of the film where Paterson throws his weight onto Knuckles forcing his confession since time is of the essence. Knuckles confesses choking under the pressure that Lisa could be dead.
Last Seen Alive (2022) Movie Ending Explained: Can Will Spann find his wife Lisa before Detective Paterson?
Will Spann thickens the plot when he finds that the CCTV Camera outside the gas station is working. He confronts Oscar at the store’s front desk, who blatantly lies about seeing Will’s wife and the camera recording. After a fight ensues and Will takes Oscar to task, Will grabs the footage to take it to Paterson. Gaining his first lead, he claims shotgun in the investigation when he goes back to Lisa’s parents, who identify the person in the CCTV footage. They know him as Knuckles, who went to school with Lisa and is also working on constructing their house. Will immediately takes his car and goes all the way up to where Lisa’s mother saw Knuckles’ car last. On the way, he calls Detective Paterson to apologize for his behavior during his questioning. Paterson understands something is afoot and that Will could have a lead.
Will confronts Knuckles, who is caught unaware of Will’s presence in his trailer. A fight ensues, resulting in Knuckles getting tied up to be kidnapped by Will and put in the trunk of the car. When the Policeman stops the car because Will is speeding, Knuckles is discovered, and Will escapes arrest to run into the forest. Acting on Knuckles’ intel, Will must search for Frank, who possibly could be holding Lisa against her will. Will’s wolf instinct kicks into high gear, trying to find Lisa on Frank’s property. As he approaches a couple of trailers, a car enters the compound, and he sees Oscar get out of the car. This becomes the final clue to tell him he knew Lisa and that he was involved in Lisa’s disappearance. Now the need to find locate Lisa is more urgent as a danger has become more imminent.
With a shotgun in hand, he slowly walks through different rogue meth labs to find Frank, who engages in a firing battle with Will, and Will ends up killing Frank and his assistant. In this hot pursuit to find Lisa and during the flying of bullets, a small portion of the lab catches fire. Will is unaware, but after he finds out that he has killed two people, he steps out to survey the rest of the property. Funnily enough, the narrative turns back to Oscar, who meets him outside the lab. With guns raised, Will and Oscar face off. Oscar admits to knowing Lisa and shows Will her phone luring him into further madness. After Oscar demands money for knowledge of her true location, the lab blows up and burns Oscar to a crisp leaving no chance for Will to get Lisa’s real location.
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We would think this is the end, but there is more. The plot unravels further as we discover that all hope may not be lost for Will and Lisa. Meanwhile, Paterson is getting Knuckles to talk. Knuckles confesses to Paterson that he had a crazy idea of kidnapping Lisa to claim ransom from the rich husband. But when he acted on it and took her to Frank, Frank would never leave them both alive, considering they know what happens on that property. Frank tells Knuckles to dig a grave for Lisa. But Knuckles runs off in fear for his life and leaves Lisa to her fate.
Paterson and Will are both panicking because they still have not found Lisa. When Paterson reaches Frank’s property, he finds the hole, and it is covered with a large metal sheet. He lifts the sheet to breathe a sigh of relief because Lisa’s dead body is not in the hole. Chances of her being alive have gone up. Will suddenly hears a kicking from a booth, and he approaches it, calling out Lisa’s name. The kicking continues, and he opens the booth-like shed. Lisa is tied up and bruised with cuts. Will opens her bindings, lifts her from the booth, and takes her home to her parents.
Final Words:
Towards the end, we see two men that are driven by the same grit, and they finally recognize it in each other’s eyes. Will’s character employs methods that were unconventional and borderline criminal even though he did shoot two people dead, which Paterson claimed later that the post-mortem did show that two victims died before the lab caught fire and blew. With a happy ending for Will and Lisa, the rain showers them with a gentle reminder that sorrows may be washed away to pave a path for a new beginning.
The film is a traumatic viewing where we constantly engage with Gerard Butler’s existential crisis making it an exhausting watch while Russel Hornsby stabilizes the narrative to bring the film to a concrete close. The ending seems disconnected and abrupt, suggesting a happy ending even though Butler’s character does not entirely believe so. The story has two strong parallels, but the film falls short of being an entertaining watch. Sometimes, the film loses the viewer, but the story keeps the person watching, and this film does just that.
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