Searching - Rethinking the viewing experience

Here's the kicker: Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching is a fantastic film, but on paper it shouldn't be. Tell me if you've heard this one before: Father loves his daughter but they aren't as close as they should be, and their relationship is somewhat tenuous due to the state of things with the mother. Suddenly, the daughter turns up missing and it's up to the father (played by a reasonably famous actor) to use a variety of tools, skills and ingenuity in order to save her.

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We've seen this type of movie before, the "overprotective dad" power fantasy, but most often through stars like Liam Neeson and often executed via curt action film. Usually, this kind of struggle is resolved through a combination of advanced, well practiced techniques and rigorous physical execution. Searching doesn't have any of that, preferring to ground the father more realistically. When it all goes down, he's scared, confused, and absolutely focused.

Ultimately the most impressive trait of Searching is this amazing accomplishment of non-contrivance. Here's the setup: David Kim is a father to wife Pamela Kim and their daughter Margot, who is a junior in high school. Pamela passed away a couple years ago and David doesn't really talk about it much. One day, Margot doesn't come back from her friend's house, which initially gets David getting worried and erupts into full blown panic when it's confirmed that she's missing. David spends the entire film trying to figure out where Margot could possibly be, requiring him to hack into her various social media accounts in an attempt to gather information and in the process discovering a whole lot about his daughter he didn't even know or possibly took for granted. Now, you're probably imagining what this film looks like and aren't that impressed. I mean, who wants to watch a film about a man sitting at a computer while the police do all the "exciting" stuff? And let's be clear, "David trawling through an unfamiliar social media landscape in search for people that know his daughter" is roughly the entire film. So, it's pretty clear that Searching will struggle to hook you on the strength of its premise, but Changanty understood that. He decided to make the film a bit more personal and significantly more nuanced, and he accomplished that with the perfect framing device. It's the one with which you're reading this.

Instead of filming the actor John Cho sitting at a desk and occasionally zooming in on important details on the screen, the entirety of Searching exists on the screen. You only ever see David through the lens of a webcam or through FaceTime, and occasionally via video footage. You only see him act in the movement of the mouse cursor and his typing of words. You only hear him through phone calls either with the police or with complete strangers. And, like any good mystery thriller, it's perfectly designed to limit information and encourages the audience to fill in the holes. In the process of creating a view that is as original as it is familiar, Changanty shoots a film that has every opportunity for contrivance and instead masterfully incites tension and imposes drama through the veins of its audience. Add that with a surprisingly emotional story, intelligent plot arrangement, reasonable performances, and a framing of technology and social media that genuinely feels positive for once (name me another film that does that, I'll wait) ultimately elevates Searching from "cool gimmick" to "legitimately clever".

And the decisions, good lord. How do you convey emotion and tension with nothing more than a mouse and a screen? How much can you really say? Apparently a metric ton, because Changanty gets a truly disgusting amount of mileage from the simplest of tools. It's all in the little things: deleting a message before sending it, closing videos after watching only a couple seconds, slowly scrolling through photos. Again, on paper, this is not exciting, but film is visual and it's greatest weapon is time. There was a moment in this film where David stumbles upon an unsuspecting image on screen, and for basically the next minute there was nothing. No movement, no sound, just this image. And over the course of that minute, I heard people in the theater progressively having that "moment of realization" in gasps and oh's at what just happened. From the beginning to the end, I was completely invested in what was going on and how it was going to end, and all it took was interesting information shown on screen just long enough for the audience to process it, and a good story to weave it all together.

Searching is a great mystery film, and possibly the best modern mystery film of the last few years. It's not overly complicated, but it is absolutely engaging, and displays a wonderful mastery over time. If it's still in theaters near you, please go see it.