‘I didn’t know her. I didn’t know my daughter…’
There have been a few films in recent years delivered using only phone and/or laptop screens. Unfriended was an early exponent. Host is perhaps the most famous. In the middle of those two films came Searching, a 2018 drama that uses a mixture of webcam, Skype and security camera footage to piece together a missing person’s case. And it mostly works very well…
Worried father David Kim (John Cho) goes into detective mode following the unexpected disappearance of his daughter Margot (Michelle La). Helping him crack the case is an actual detective (Debra Messing) and his brother Peter (Joseph Lee).
From writer-director Aneesh Chaganty, Searching is ingenious in its use of internal screens to tell the story. The problem is that the story itself is fairly predictable until the third act switcheroo. That being said, the central cast does a good job and there are moments when Searching is properly gripping. There is a nagging feeling, however, that if not for the central conceit involving the devices used to tell the story this would be a pretty forgettable film.
Searching is an important film in the ‘screenlife’ subgenre (as it is apparently known) but aside from the concept, there isn’t much to separate Searching from many other missing person thrillers on the market. There is enough here, however, to have inspired me to add the 2023 sequel Missing to my watchlist. Watch this space.