Vain (2025) Review

Synopsis

While filming a documentary, Monsters and Mysteries host Elizabeth Pierce along with fellow streamer, Andrew McCoy and filmmaker, Russell Harper, stumble upon footage of a missing girl and uncover the truth behind her disappearance.

Good Points

• Elizabeth was very easy to watch, and put in a decent performance.
  
  
• The Halvor clips are the most interesting parts whenever they appear.
  
  
• The way everything is built out of phones, livestreams, and edited uploads fits the story well.
  
  
• It has a steady curiosity running through it, so even when it slows down, you still want to see what the next bit of footage that it is going to reveal.
  
  
• The documentary and online content matches how people actually document and over-document everything online.
  
  
• The shorter runtime keeps it from dragging too much.
  
  
• The ending is quick and doesn’t try to inflate itself into something bigger than it is.
  
  
• There’s a rough, low-budget feel that fits the found footage genre very well.

Bad Points

• The middle section falls into a loop of clue, reaction, filming, repeat, without really adding much new.
  
  
• Some important moments sometimes happen off-camera and just get explained later.
  
  
• The investigation side of things sometimes just turns into reading out information instead of digging into it.
  
  
• Some scenes set up tension that doesn’t really go anywhere.
  
  
• The mystery itself is fairly simple, so the build-up feels a bit bigger than it probably should be.
  
  
• The police side of things feels like a dead end every time it comes up.
  
  
• The story depends very heavily on coincidence to move things forward rather than the characters actually pushing things forward.
  
  
• The film dips whenever it switches away from Halvor’s material back to the main group.
  
  
• Some of the emotional reactions from some characters are funny in a way they shouldn’t be.

Final Thoughts on Vain

It’s worth a watch an internet mystery setup is your thing, even if it doesn’t fully deliver on the tension it keeps aiming for, but there are enough strong moments in the mix to keep it watchable enough.

Vain on IMDB
Vain Trailer
Watch and stream Vain for free on YouTube