Screenplay Written by Aneesh Chaganty & Sev Ohanian
Directed by Aneesh Chaganty
**** (four stars)
RATED PG 13
This one really shook and rattled me down to my bones.
I will forever appreciate when a film can take me completely by surprise and for my sense and sensibilities, Director Aneesh Chaganty's film debut "Searching" is 2018's finest thriller and believe me, I never saw this one coming. Chaganty has created a powerful thriller that exists without graphic violence, without prefabricated set-ups and preposterous outcomes.
It is a film that is set and planted so firmly inside what is now the mundane in our 21st century societal landscape regarding our relationship with electronics, the internet and social media, that the results nearly push the thriller element into sheer horror, for how rapidly and how realistically the very premise could logically occur to any one of us in the real world. Brilliantly possessing and utilizing more thought that it ever needed to have, "Searching" is a popcorn thriller re-contextualized into a multi-layered experience that plunges into the dark heart of our on-line obsessions and dependency. And through Aneesh Chaganty's innovative techniques (more on that later), "Searching" grows into something that is nothing less than ingenious in its white knuckle tension as well as its deeply astute societal commentary.
Set in San Jose, California, "Searching" stars John Cho as David Kim, devoted husband to Pamela Kim (Sara Sohn) and Father to their daughter Margot (Michelle La). After Pamela's death from lymphoma, David and Margot, while still close, gradually begin to emotionally drift apart, never connecting upon the loss that has forever altered their lives together as well as individually.
One night, Margot visits a friend's house for a school study group. Later that night, Margot attempts to call David three different times to no avail as her Father is sound asleep. By morning, as David awakens and spends the day trying to re-connect with Margot, he soon discovers that she is indeed missing, thus beginning a search into her whereabouts with the aid of Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing).
This is as far as I am willing to go with plot description regarding the film. But in essence, what I have given you is as much as you need heading into Aneesh Chaganty's "Searching," a film that again takes the exceedingly familiar, so familiar that it is now commonplace and even innocuous, and transforms it into something utterly terrifying. I would not be surprised if your perceptions are altered after viewing this film, just as mine were. So much so, that logging onto my favorite sites felt markedly foreign all over again...and to the point of being absolutely sinister.
Now, regardless of everything that we have been hearing in the news regarding privacy issues and the dissemination of fake news, I am not the person to jump onto the "Facebook Is Evil" bandwagon. Facebook is not the monster, in and of itself, for everything depends upon how it is being used and the intentions of the user.
That being said, "Searching" feels like the perfect extension of films like David Fincher's "The Social Network" (2010) and even Bo Burnham's "Eighth Grade" from this year, as the former film served as a societal warning to our decreasing sense of humanity as or technological advances continued to increase, while the latter delved into our societal dependence upon social media and the soul sickness that has resulted from our human disconnections with each other plus the multiple lives we live and cultivate when comparing our activities within the real and virtual worlds.
It is this very conceit and perspective that makes "Searching" such an insidious feature, especially as Chaganty is never hyperbolic in his storytelling or messaging, simply allowing everything to unfold in a matter-of-fact fashion that only accentuates the terror as the social media landscape is so vast, uncharted and therefore, unchecked and regulated, seemingly impossible to ever being effectively policed. We are shown precisely just how easy it is to hack into another's social media accounts, how simple it is to assume another identity, how the creating of new personas and on-line lives is simultaneously cunning as well as almost seen as an afterthought.
This thematic quality ties directly into the aforementioned technique that Chaganty employs in "Searching" and at is he has chosen to tell his story solely through the lens of social media, text messages, laptop and surveillance cameras, television broadcasts and the like, meaning not one scene in the film is set explicitly in the real word as everything is viewed through another lens.
This effect, which could have completely existed as a gimmick, is in actuality superbly and seamlessly executed, allowing the film to function as an unnerving Hall of Mirrors for the characters as well as ourselves, as David Kim, through his relentless pursuit of his daughter, is forced to confront his impressions of the person he knows in the real world and the greater truth of the person that exists within the internet and social media, therefore upending everything that he ever knew to be real about this child and ultimately, his own life and family.
Smartly not content to just allow "Searchng" to exist as a dizzyingly inventive visual feat, Aneesh Chaganty has ensured that his film is cemented with a series of compelling and realistic characters and motivations that allows the thriller to unfold cleanly and almost as akin to a magic trick being slowly unveiled before our eyes.
Yes, it is an intense as something like Ron Howard's "Ransom" (1996), for example. But what made the film burrow deeply under my skin was all contained in the film's opening minutes as we witness the life and times of the Kim family, entirely through photos, home videos taken via computer cameras, computer calendars and so on, from Margot's earliest years through her Mother Pamela's death, making for a sequence that was as devastating as the opening sequence from Pixar and Pete Doctor's "Up" (2009). "Searching" could have easily existed as the next revenge film like Pierre Morel's "Taken" (2008). But Chaganty gave us something exceedingly better, deeper, and defiantly more palpable in its wrenching tension, and it was all due to its overall sense of humanity.
In addition to serving as a thriller and cultural commentary, "Searching" is also a stirring meditation upon grief and mourning. Just look at the film's title and especially at John Cho's pitch perfect performance (once again, representation is everything as "Searching" marks itself as the first American thriller headlined by an Asian-American), as we are easily able to regard the multiple meanings implicit in the film's name, Yes, David Kim is literally searching for his daughter. Yet, we are also asked to read the word regarding how it is used within our lives within the internet as well as David and Margot's pursuit of solace in the aftermath of Pamela's death, which rightfully hangs over the entire film as a cloud of unending sorrow.
That feeling of loss is indeed the soulful core of Aneesh Chaganty's "Searching." The loss of loved ones and family but perhaps, even greater, the gradual yet rapid loss of ourselves over something that is, in essence, quite meaningless.
SAVAGE POSTSCRIPT
This message is intended for those of you who happen to be parents, particularly of teenagers. As stated, there is nothing gratuitous within "Searching." No graphic violence or anything of that salacious content.
However, I do think that what is presented in the film is done so through a viewpoint that is more realistic than escapist making the drama of the film much more aching than one might envision before heading into this movie. Perhaps I might be over-sensitive but it did cross my mind as I watched the film and remarked upon how effective and even moving the experience was for me...and I do not have children of my own at all.
Yet, if by seeing this film one was to become more watchful of their child's on-line activities, then I would imagine that the film has made a positive impact. To that end, this postscript is not to be read as a warning for you.
Just some words of preparation from your friendly neighborhood film enthusiast.
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