Searching (2018)
Film Review
By the Geezer of Oz
“After his 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a desperate father breaks into her laptop to look for clues to find her.” [IMDb]
It seems that there is a growing trend in films these days, in which filmmakers base their stories around social media in some way and showcase widely-used technology and social media apps and computer software in order to tell the story, films such as Unfriended and Friend Request instantly come to mind. While for the most part effective, I can’t help but feel like this trend is fast becoming today’s ‘found footage’ gimmick. What used to once be a film shown through the surviving footage found in a handy camcorder (and in later films, a mobile/cell phone) has now progressed to stories told via footage of computer screens showing widely used software and highly popular social media platforms and apps.
While this may not be a bad thing, as it does give us the ability and opportunity to identify with a film and its characters due to our familiarity with such technology which we use on a daily basis, it does bring about a flat and low budget-type look to these films. Searching uses this technique to give us all the backstory and relationship within the family which the story revolves around in a very effective way, but ultimately, the more this technique is used, the more the film looks like a low budget TV movie, at least in my eyes.
Now, this particular film, while possessing the above-mentioned lackluster look, still has more good to it than bad. Director Aneesh Chaganty equates himself fairly well in his first feature attempt. While it is very difficult to remark on the camera work, as most of the film is seen via various phone and laptop screens, it seems Chaganty had great success in making his actors very believable.
The film stars the more versatile than you’d think John Cho (Harold and Kumar films, Star Trek franchise, TV’s Sleepy Hollow and The Exorcist) as a devoted father who, after losing his wife to Cancer, has to dig through his daughter’s social media history in order to find some clues into her disappearance. Also starring is Debra Messing (The Mothman Prophecies, Along Came Polly, TV’s Ned and Stacey, The Mysteries of Laura, Will & Grace) as the sympathetic Detective assigned to the case. Michelle La, Joseph Lee and Sara John round out the effectively performing cast.
The script, written by Sev Ohanian and Chaganty himself, is mostly solid if somewhat predictable to a trained eye. It throws enough twists and turns into the mix to keep the average viewer guessing and engaged, if not transfixed, by the goings on. Personally, having picked the ending a little too early in the film, left me with a bitter taste. However, I cannot ignore the fact that Searching is a solid film that has something to say about the way we live our lives today and our total reliance on technology and the evils that can be so easily committed with some savvy manipulation of this technology and the internet and all they deliver at our disposal.
The viewing experience does deliver a fairly effective story, well acted and directed, but one that seemed more like a long episode of a TV show than anything cinematic. Then again, in today’s era of online streaming, that may have been the intended purpose.
Efficient and engaging for the most part. 7/10.
