Movie Review: Searching|
I didn’t think movies could be made with such novelty and awesomeness. Finally some real human-computer interactions in the big screen.
You have seen movies in wide shot, and you have seen movies in found footage shot. But this time, you are going to see it through Facetime.
That is the biggest surprise. The whole movie happens only on 2 laptops and 1 desktop screens. You can only find the actors in live chat windows and pictures stored in the characters’ hard drive.
Imagine the hardship the actors and the crew had to go through for making this movie. However, Searching still tells a well-weaven and intriguing story. This alone, in my opinion, is a great success. But there is more.
Spoilers alert.
The Story
Searching is a thriller. It’s nothing about supernatural affair or psychos, but an Internet based detective story that seems simple at first glance. As the story unfolds, plot twists keep going on. David Kim raised his daughter Margot alone after his wife passed away. One evening Margot disappears after attending a biology study group. Due to lack of communication between the father and the daughter, Kim has to search the Internet with the police for information that may explain his daughter’s disappearance.
The director leaves many disguised and misleading foreshadowing hints in the story that support the later plot twists, which is something I admire. These plot twists do not come for granted like they do in the counterpart movies. Instead, every twist is reasonable.
3 missing calls at late night
Before Margot goes missing, she calls her dad 3 times yet no one picks up the phone since Kim is asleep. This is the first hint in the movie.
The next day Kim finds he cannot reach out to his daughter. To figure out what happens to her, Kim realizes he has to make some calls to people around his daughter. However, since his wife passed away, although Kim tries to be friends with his daughter, the father in fact has nothing but very limited conversation and knowledge about his daughter. Kim in the end has to log in his wife’s desktop account to find out the contact information of Margot’s piano teacher and some childhood besties.
After confirming with these individuals, Kim learns more surprising facts. Margot has stopped attending piano class long ago yet still taking piano tuition from her dad. More shockingly, Margot does not have any real friends since middle school. Realizing he has no clue to where his daughter might be, Kim calls the police.
Police takes the case
Detective Vick calls Kim and tells she will be in charge of the case. After searching online of the detective, Kim finds her responsible and reliable. After providing proof of an alternative ID and bank account transaction history, Vick indicates Margot may have run away. However, Kim has questions about the 3 missing calls at the night when Margot went missing. Also he has been doing his online research as well and finds Margot was visiting a live cast website Youcast. In the local drive he finds Margot’s saved videos and realizes she might have driven to a lake.
The police recovers the sunk car with no leads to where Margot is. Searching Margot becomes the top hit in local news. The director puts sarcasm here towards the Internet mob — after Margot’s missing is confirmed, people starts to jump out and claim to be good friends with her; criticize the father for absent of the child’s life, etc.
Plot twist
Meanwhile Kim spots a frequent visitor to his daughter’s Youcast channel who was later confirmed innocent by Vick. Finally Vick brings the bad news of a drug abuser confessing murder of Margot. When uploading videos for Margot’s memorial, Kim discovers the biggest twist.
The same person appears in both the Youcast user avatar and the memorial site. After using Google image search Kim learns that the person does not work for the memorial site, nor is she a user on Youcast. All this leads to the lies of detective Vick. Her son faked himself as a female user on Youcast to reach out to Margot and later followed and accidentally pushed her off a cliff near the lake. Vick fakes the evidence to help cover her son, which includes making a fake ID, deleting transaction information of Margot’s bank account, sinking Margot’s car, lying about the identity of the Youcast user and convincing the drug abuser to make confession.
The police searches again the lake area and finally finds Margot and brings the family together again.
One of the highlights in the film is the real human-computer interactions. Most websites in the film are authentic and the character meets real-world problems when browsing them.
The key that brings Margot back to her dad is Kim’s accidental discovery of the shared model picture on the two sites. This is unfortunately unlikely to happen in reality and it makes the story a movie plot.
In brief, the film successfully expresses both approval and sarcasm of people’s use of the Internet through the story, and in a very balanced way.
The Acting
I think John Cho gives his best performance so far. The very few times the audience sees the actor’s face is through the Facetime camera. Cho successfully gives the proper facial expression when talking on the phone with other people, making his acting convincing.
Although the actors are not always in front of the camera, the audience can feel the continuity of the story by mentally linking the screen content based on the indication of the footages.
Most of the characters’ emotions are expressed via the SMS. For example, at the end of the movie, Kim finally says the words he fears and fails to tell his daughter. When seeing the message, the audience realizes the father has broken the wall.
After that, Margot changed her desktop wallpaper, implying her relationship with dad is mended.
The Crew
I can’t help but wonder what crew made this wonderful movie. As IMDb lists, the film is written and directed by young (born 1991) Indian-American director Aneesh Chaganty. Searching is his 3rd film. The director himself is born and raised in the Internet era, which explain why the film shows genuine human-computer interactions on the screen.
Composer Torin Borrowdale also dedicates a cliff-hanging soundtrack that matches the movie’s vibe and expands the suspension.
The Critics
On IMDb, users give their approval to the movie. Indeed, from the innovative presentation to the suspending story, Searching has the balance hence the power to hold the audience fast in their seats.
Also in the users’ reviews I see the social impact the movie raises. The movie tells a story happens to an Asian family. There is no fortune show offs or other exaggerated aspects of Asian life but only the down-to-earth perspective that reflects most Asian American’s actual living.
