Searching is a 2018 thriller about a father’s search into his sixteen-year-old daughter’s computer after her disappearance.
No matter how careful you think you are, almost all of us have a digital footprint. This is the focus of a burgeoning new subgenre of online found footage films produced (and at times directed) by Timur Bebmambetov, now called “screen life.” No one really knew this was becoming a thing when Unfriended hit theatres with mixed reviews but there is no doubt it’s gaining traction as this year’s Fantasia Festival saw the three films telling different stories using “screen life” as its basis: Unfriended: Dark Web, Profile and now Searching.
Searching is sort of a family drama mixed into a thriller. The film starts with an endearing (and of course dated) shot of Windows XP as David (John Cho) creates a new user profile for his wife, Pam (Sara Sohn). Through this we see the Kim family grow through the years with key moments of the couple and their hardships and milestones. The main two moments are daughter Margot’s (Michelle La) first days of school and then her mom’s diagnosis and fight with cancer.
Eventually, its gets to present day with messaging and Facetime as David messages Margot about her not doing chores. Things take a turn for the worse though when Margot doesn’t comes home from her study group, yet called her father three times in the dead of night. Realizing something has gone wrong, he files a missing person’s report and Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) is assigned to his case. David is tasked with trying to figure out who are his daughter’s friends and other contacts to maybe pinpoint where she was last seen. With that, he takes a dive into her laptop and learns that her daughter’s been hiding a few well-kept secrets.
So what is Screen Life? It’s the idea of our digital footprint being used as source to track down anyone in our own life, and it feels real. Searching uses it very well. From the protected emails and recovery passwords to the first-time discovery for clueless parents navigating outside of Facebook and Instagram. Using these real-life applications is the key to making it even more realistic, instead of fictional ones we usually see in movies.
David is a parent stuck in his worst nightmare. After the loss of his wife, he realizes that he has no idea what Margot has been up to. The truths he ends up learning lead him to a few clues and a few dead ends. It is the way that Searching sets this up that makes it both logical and engaging. It takes us no time to get invested in the recovery of this missing teenage girl and wondering whether she ran away … or something much worse.
Cho is impressive. Searching gives him a couple of moments of humor, his cluelessness for modern social media making him do silly things relatable for most of a younger generation. At the same time, while Margot’s story highlights her lack of communication, it makes us think carefully about whose fault all this really is. La is very convincing, making us believe that Margot is a good kid going through a hard time.
Searching might appear straightforward in description, but the use of Screen Life is one of the most outstanding to date. Different from Unfriended, it takes us along a personal journey through the life of a father/daughter relationship while dropping us into the worst that could happen. It leaves us asking, what is worse in the end? His lack of knowledge of his daughter’s social life or whether she will ever come home? Either way, it makes for a traumatic journey. Being a thriller, it takes the right approach to put you at the edge of your seat, loading up plenty of clues along the way, full of twists and turns and should keep genre fans more than satisfied.
Highly recommended, Searching arrives in theatres on August 3rd.