Searching (Review)
Searching Turns Out to Be Exactly What You’re Looking For.
Given how much I enjoyed Unfriended: Dark Web, I’ve been excited to see Searching since it seemed almost like a spiritual sibling to it. After sitting through Searching though I can say that these two movies are nothing alike. For one thing, Searching is an absolute masterpiece of a thriller. It’s filled with twists and turns and is smart enough to pull every since one of them off. It’s been a long time since I haven’t seen an ending coming and it feels good.
Told completely through windows on a computer screen, Searching is the story of a father, David Kim (John Cho), desperate to find his missing daughter, Margot (Michelle La). However, as he digs deeper into the life of his teenage daughter he soon discovers his daughter wasn’t who he thought she was. Thus the main theme of Searching is born: We are the secrets we keep.
In a lot of ways, Searching is a performance-driven film. Most of the scenes are John Cho reacting to new discoveries or showing his desperation grow exponentially as time drags on. He’s very much the glue that holds this film together since there really isn’t a lot of action going for the most part. While detectives search for his daughter in “real life” he sets out to uncover who her friends were and what the timeline leading up to her disappearance looks like. It’s during his investigation though that he slowly starts to get a look into the life of his daughter seeing everything that she kept from him. Because of this, it’s like he’s losing his daughter twice. Cho’s emotional performance is what keeps audiences so enthralled with Searching. An actor of any lesser caliber would have ruined everything the movie was trying so hard to achieve.
Hats off to writer/ director Aneesh Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian for creating an utterly brilliant film. While it might seem a bit like a gimmick at first, their creative implementation of the apps, windows, and software used for his investigation create an incredible digital world for this film to take place in. Cho uses social media, video chat, Google searches, breaking news reports and text messaging to gather his evidence as he dives deep into his daughter’s online history and contacts in a desperate attempt to find some clue to what might have happened to her. While this might all seem silly, Searching is littered with clues scattered throughout her digital footsteps and Cho finds himself overwhelmed. The way they maneuver the story through elements that many of us use on a daily basis is both impressive and chilling.
One of the secrets to suspense is building likable characters in the first place. After all, you’re not going to get on the edge of your seat for just any old guy or gal. You have to care about them and their well being in order to really raise the stakes for them. Searching solves this problem in the first five minutes of the film with an opening that would give Up a run for its money in the feels department. In a series of photos, videos and updates we’re giving a complete history of the Kim family including the loss of Pamela Kim (Sara Sohn), David’s wife and Kim’s mother. It’s a gut-wrenching way to start any movie, but it immediately makes the two main characters relatable. You feel for them both from the get-go and that’s what makes Searching such an incredible thriller. It uses your emotional connection to the characters to continuously raise the stakes right up to the epic conclusion.
More than anything I’ve excited to see what will come next from Chaganty and Ohanian. Searching makes it very clear that they are master storytellers who know the in and outs of filmmaking. The two manage to make what might have been a gimmick into the cornerstone of their story, and more importantly, they pull it off. With this sort of incredible creativity and vision, these two have put themselves on my radar and I will be watching them in eager anticipation of their next project.
Searching is one of the best-told stories of the year. It’s so much more than I ever might have expected from it and anyone who is uncertain about this movie can leave their hesitation at the door. Not only is it a smart and taut thriller, but it features emotional performances that only drag audiences deeper into the story. It’s impossible to look away while the events of the film unfold and more importantly, it leaves you feeling satisfied. It’s easily one of the best experiences I’ve had in theaters recently, even if it is hard to watch at certain points. It might not be a traditionally fun movie, but Searching is an excellent film the needs to be seen on the big screen.
