MRMOVIESETC REVIEWS:
"Searching" (2018)
SHORT VERSION:
Believe the hype.
LONG VERSION:
For as much as I love horror, drama, and comedy, I have a special place in my heart for a good mystery movie; in particular, the ones that can find that fleeting balance between making the gears turn in your head enough that you want to beat the story to its own conclusion, but at the same time knows how to be fun and allows you to sit back to enjoy the unfolding. The biggest challenge for the filmmakers is that this is probably one of the most formulaic genres in the gambit; where the First Act is going to have your disappearance, kidnapping, murder, etc., the Second Act will have the loved one or other interested party following the breadcrumbs, and the Third will have the plot come to a head in a conclusive or ambiguous way.
I'm sure there a few miscellaneous choices in between, but the two main roads to really choose from here are either "Will the story build to an epic and satisfying climax?" or "Will this be more about the journey rather than the destination?" In a way, "Searching" is a little bit of both, though I guess it would lean toward the latter. Regardless, what Writer Sev Ohanian and Writer/Director Aneesh Chaganty have accomplished is easily one of the best, if not the best, in the genre since "Prisoners" back in 2013, and I would go as far as to say this not only tops that one, but should easily fit in many Top 10 lists at the end of this year. This is one hell of a good film.
As far as the story goes, "Searching" revolves a recently widowed father, David Kim (John Cho), and his teenage daughter, Margot (Michelle La), as both of them are trying to lead semi-normal lives a few years after David's wife, Pamela, succumbs to lymphoma after a lengthy battle. Despite the traumatic shake-up, David and Margot's relationship seems pretty level; that is until Margot leaves to go to a classmate's house for a study group late into the evening and never returns, leaving nothing but a few missed calls and Facetime notifications on David's phone that serve as a quick nod to the audience that "Yes, something definitely bad as gone down." After David is able to narrow down whom the other teenagers were at the study group, he soon finds out that Margot is not as social as he thought she was, and after attempting to look at her social media and discovering that they are all blocked from public view, he goes down the internet rabbit hole of twists, turns, red herrings, and secrets, along with the aid of local detective, Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing).
That's really about as far as I can or am willing to go, but it covers the basic gist.
On the surface, this may all sound like a run-of-the-mill flick that is trying to pander to both the social media-heavy younger demographic and to the paranoid phobias of their parents, which, in a way, is true; however, Chaganty shot "Searching" in such an intelligent way that it puts the audience in the shoes of David mostly from a First Person point-of-view as if everyone were to feel they were in on this search, and what they would do next when something David tried ended up failing. Yes, this is a tactic that's been attempted recently in horror to mixed results, although this has tackled it the best so far. Better yet, the film also had the wits about it to not put this perspective in overkill mode by having just the occasional scene here and there where it pans away from a laptop monitor or a phone screen to show the characters moving around in their environment. It's an extremely effective method across the board that helps create true feelings of dread as David digs up more and more secrets that Margot had been hiding, yet they were secrets mainly to him as the uncovered facts had been all over the internet for anybody to see should they be looking for it.
After the film ends and everything starts to sink in, it becomes more impressive yet that the success of the whole story falls almost exclusively on Cho, La, and Messing to sell it. It was easy enough in the beginning to be on David and Margot's team after the tragedy that they had endured, although that alone often cannot carry a feature all the way to the finish line, so it's up to the actors to keep that connection alive. Michelle La has such an innocent and timid sweetness to her that it's impossible to not want the best for her, and John Cho turns in what is likely his best performance to date as a father that teeters back and forth from focus to near-implosion and back again. Not to mention the importance of his character's affiliation and banter with Messing (also a solid performance) that helped generate some of the key tensions as the case unravels.
I could nit-pick a few minor issues that either nearly blew the lid of the whole thing just by trying to be a bit too clever, and an incident where David makes a poor judgment call that could be feasible for somebody under incredible emotional distress, but wasn't carried out with quite enough finesse to feel like anything more than a plot device that gets dismissed without any real ramifications. Come to think of it, if it had gone the way one would expect it to, that could have created a different angle that potentially made things intensify even further. Still, the writing had plenty more tricks up its sleeve that the film quickly recovers without any real damage done.
Overall, I think that's the most I can go into "Searching" without giving up the farm, so to speak. This is a solid and highly entertaining thriller that seems to have gone relatively unnoticed and criminally under-promoted. It's slick, perfectly paced, and to alleviate some possible concerns, I should also note that this is not some preachy bullshit about a dull or doomed generation. Sure, it illustrates some of the frightening possibilities that come with the technology at hand, but the goal here was not to condescend and instead treat people as smart enough to know the threat.
As I mentioned in the short version up top - Believe the hype. I cannot think of any reason why you would regret seeking out a copy of this and giving it a shot. I cannot recommend it enough.
"Searching": 9.5/10
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