Reed Harkness began teaching himself filmmaking as a child, using a home video camera and a Super 8mm film camera that he found in storage in the garage. He typically used the much-younger Sam, an athletic, exuberant boy, as his leading man. It's obvious from the snippets of footage in the earliest sections that Reed is a born filmmaker, varying his angles as if he'd storyboarded them on paper, on in his head, beforehand, and often shooting in slow-motion and from unusual vantage points. It's also clear that Sam is a gifted screen performer, although he'd never have described himself that way (and in the present day, still doesn't). They do stunts and engage in trick photography in the manner of early silent comedies and experimental films. Sometime after Jois' disappearance, they begin filming episodes in the recurring adventures of a superhero known as the Blue Panther (played by Sam), with each entry chronicling one of the character's missions.
Then one day, Sam suggests that the Blue Panther should find Sam's mother. As Harkness describes the moment in his voice-over narration, they both were surprised that he said it, then seemed to realize that what they'd be making together next would not be another diversion but a documentary-mystery with the power to break the whole family's heart all over again.
This is where the reader should duck out and return to the piece later if they would rather not know more about what happens.
Suffice it to say that this writer came into the film knowing nothing about the events being chronicled and as a result, spent the first section of the story in a state of abject dread imagining what might have happened to Jois. The answer is upsetting, no matter what you might have anticipated. Jois was feared dead, perhaps even murdered, but was eventually located by police, who told her family that she was fine but wanted no further contact with them.
There was no secret abuse or apparent drug or alcohol problems, mental illness, secret second identities or hidden criminal pasts, or any of the other bombshells that usually drop in stories like this one. What happened was much more mundane: Jois was unhappy being a mother, got a chance to leave and remake herself, took it, and didn't look back.
There are many films, novels and plays about fathers who leave their families without explanation and the damage it does to those left behind. But there aren't many about mothers who do it. One conspicuous recent exception would make a great double-feature with "Sam Now": Steven Spielberg's fictionalized memoir "The Fablemans," about how his mother left his father and their children. It has a lot of details in common with "Sam Now," from the teenage suburban filmmaker protagonist to the central story of a woman who is outwardly a devoted mother and partner but is dying inside and takes a leap that she knows will mark her as a pariah for the rest of her life.
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