"Searching" review

John Cho's no nonsense hunt for his missing daughter is actually way more interesting than Liam Neeson's.




Former Google employee Aneesh Chaganty’s directorial debut centers on David Kim’s (John Cho) search for his missing daughter Margot. With the help of Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing), David scours through his daughter’s internet accounts, learning more about her than ever thought he would find.

What sets “Searching” apart, not only from other low budget dramas or found footage films, but just about any other film ever made is that the entire movie is presented exclusively in screenshots and video clips playing out on the desktops of computers and smart devices and although this grants the film a plethora of unique qualities in terms of technique, atmosphere, structure and tone, I hesitate to use the word gimmick to describe it.

Unlike Blumhouse’s “Unfriended” movies, which play out as stock and traditional horror flicks with traditional thrills and narrative structure in a shooting style that’s unique but not warranted, “Searching” is a truly groundbreaking approach to cinema and storytelling in general that couldn’t have been properly executed at any period of time prior to the year it was made.

John Cho gets to flex his criminally underappreciated talent to contribute to a narrative that really puts you into the mindset of a worried father in the modern age better than a traditional crafted film narrative ever could have.

Watching the life of a family grow and mature through the various computers that they obtain and move on from, along with little details, such as typing etiquette in emails and messenger programs is impactful because we all know we’ve typed out that angry 7 paragraph text message that we immediately deleted after 6 seconds of clarity in favor of a less heated and more conservative alternative.

Things like the paranoia of reading somebody’s messages out of context carry a darker and more dramatic weight to them while the human cost of self-serving charities and manipulative saccharine interviews for a cheap 5 minutes of fame put on by people that didn’t know or care about the victims brought to the surface in an internet age cuts deeply because the atmosphere perpetuated by subtle cues of the soundtrack while keeping the visual canvas contained to actions performed by a man in pain who’s coming apart at the seams do an effective job of putting viewers in his shoes.

As formatted, “Searching” is a tense, heart wrenching, compelling, and masterfully crafted drama that questions how much we really know our loved ones and how much that love is born out of true affection for them or our perception of whom they are.

Had it stayed planted firmly in that territory, it would have easily been a wildfire success of an experiment. Much like the very format it chooses to relay this experiment in however, the movie takes things one step beyond by remembering that it’s still a mystery and once it gets to show off as such with a third act twist rearing its head in the last 10 minutes, a tactic that usually sinks films at the finish line, it somehow only gets better.

“Searching” is not one of the best films of the year thus far; it is the best. Everything in it from the writing to the performances are so dramatically impactful and relatably grounded that it would probably have worked as a film if it were shot in a standard multi-camera format.

In the form that it has been released into theaters however, I can’t say that I’ve seen such a gambit work relative to everything that would have pointed to the contrary as well as this film in my entire life. It’s opened the doors to new presentation for cinematic storytelling and shined a light on the twists that new media can provide to old tales.

10 Browser History Rabbit Holes out of 10