Searching : Portée disparue

A story told entirely through a character's laptop screen - it's an increasingly popular gimmick that's now been done enough times that it can no longer be called fresh. But, thankfully, this is best execution of the style to date. Aneesh Chaganty dazzles in his directorial debut, displaying a mastery of the medium, crafting a compelling film narrative told entirely through someone's laptop activity.

The movie comes out hot with a mostly nonverbal tale of love and family that's shades of 'Up' and nearly as affecting. An emotionally warping scene like that to kick things off lets us know immediately that we're in good hands. The music choices give a strong signal of this as well. I firmly believe that music choices in the opening minutes of movies are as reliable an indicator of the movie's quality as you'll find.

This moving love story tells that us the family is close, or, at least they were before mom died. Now dad David (John Cho) is raising his daughter Margot (Michelle La) as well he can, but they seem a bit distant. When Margot mysteriously goes missing, he finds out just how little he knows about his daughter.

He and police detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) scramble to find out what happened to Margot - was she kidnapped, catfished, or did she runaway? The work they put in to unravel this mystery is frantic and exhausting. They track Margot's car on traffic cams, they contact all of her Facebook friends, and they dig for anything of use they can find on her laptop. The level of detail displayed in the investigation is so thorough that it's as much an education in snooping as it is entertainment (not that parents should follow these steps to snoop on their own kids!)

It's a constant thrill ride throughout, even as conventional storytelling techniques seep through the cracks at the end when the laptop screen gimmick proves too challenging. One answered question leads to five more unanswered, and a few false endings and twists will leave you breathless. In movies, there are twists and then there are TWISTS. "Searching" has TWISTS. Enjoy.

When Searching was initially annouced I was excited, a John Cho straight role and in that unique presentation style? Count me in, this was on paper destined to be something special.

Sadly whenever I hype a movie up like this they tend to fall flat, but not Searching. No, no Searching lived up to my high expectations and the John Cho movie demonstrated that this is one of those guys like Ryan Reynolds and Will Smith who truly can do it all.

The whole movie plays out through pc windows and camera footage. Yes it has been done before with the likes of Unfriended (2014) but they took the concept to the next level here and it works considerably better than you'd imagine.

John Cho delivers an emotional tour de force with some of the best written material I've seen in years. It's so clever, so intricate and just when you think you've got it all figured out another spanner is thrown into the works to make you re-evaluate everything you've seen so far.

As I'm getting older I'm becoming a harsher critic because I've seen everything before. Movies like Searching reaffirm my faith in the industry, it's fresh, it's fascinating and doesn't fall for any of the usual Hollywood tropes.

By far Searching is the best film I've seen in a longtime, a true unconditional triumph and I applaud everyone involved. Outstanding!

The Good:

Very unique cinematography

Powerful performance by Cho

Incredibly smart writing

The Bad:

Nothing springs to mind

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

There is hope for Hollywood yet

John Cho is one of the most underappreciated actors in the industry

This film got it right in the technology department. All real websites, technology and actual examples of how you can search the internet to find information. They had to get this right and as an avid tech enthusiastic i was pleased that they did.

The storyline was well written, had twists and turns that i did not expect. Decent movie!

It's the number of people sitting at the edge of their seat that makes the score a 10/10. It's like riding a rollercoaster whose incline never ceased. Your pulse is pounding and it's well worth the ending, which no one in my group figured out.

The father daughter relationship felt so genuine. The dad humor was on point, and when things got serious it felt real. It was like "Taken", but if it happened in real life. Google search the hell out of your daughter's life to find her.

For all the people who ever tried (And failed) to make a compelling thriller about the internet, from "Unfriended" to "Megan Is Missing", I have news for you:

Someone finally did it.

"Searching" is quite possibly the first film I've seen that truly treats the internet as the entity it is without any silly exaggerations, fake websites, ignorance or judgement. Instead, this film treats it as a platform to tell a compelling mystery story with an excellent performance by John Cho and a quite honestly revolutionary sense of direction at its center.

"Searching" concerns itself primarily with the character of David Kim, played by John Cho (Of 'Harold & Kumar' fame), who's daughter goes missing suddenly and is only left with a trail of breadcrumbs that exist entirely on the internet. Whether it be social media, text logs or anything in-between, the film becomes a frantic search to find his missing daughter.

The film itself is an odd hybrid of the Found Footage genre and of an actual narrative film. What I mean by this is that we still see close ups, we still hear a musical score, and still see various camera tricks incorporated into the film, but our vantage point is limited only to a screen and what may appear on it. Because of this, the direction expertly resorts to showing many forms of multi-media to paint a story that a feature film could tell. From the film's wide-spanning opening (Which is oddly reminiscent of Pixar's "Up" in more ways than one) to every direction it goes beyond that, the film stays in its proverbial lane and uses its media and its story platform to tell a compelling story within its mean.

This execution, by first-time director Aneesh Chaganty, is done BRILLIANTLY. There is not a single moment where you do not buy what is occurring on-screen when it comes to the way these sites and media function (Aside from a few hiccups that I will get into later), and it truly shows an understanding of both the limits of this scope and of the media they used to tell this story. Crazy as it sounds, it is an incredible accomplishment seen here by Chaganty that the film remained comprehensible, well-directed, and ended up as the first film of its genre to ever incorporate social media properly.

Speaking of which, it is a delight that we do not get any fake websites in this film. What I mean by this is, there is no "sub-in" for Youtube or Facebook or anything of that like. Facebook is Facebook, Youtube is Youtube, Tumblr is Tumblr, etc etc. It is both a treat to those who look for authenticity in this concept that not only did the crew know what they were talking about, but also to see that they trusted audience to expect realism and no substitute. Fake social media sites in film is out, and incorporating the quite real social media sites around us is IN..and I couldn't be happier.

This could perhaps be enough for a downright experimental film to be considered serviceable, but what truly elevates this even further is John Cho's fantastic performance as a father at his wit's end fighting to find his daughter. Though we only get small bursts of the clear talent and commitment he has for this role, by the time the film was over even his own mouse cursor and movements depicted by his searching through the internet had its own injected 'character' to it.

Despite how well the film is executed, a few flaws do hold it back from being a masterpiece by a first-time director. The climax of the film and the conclusion we reach to the mystery itself is a bit fantastical and hard-to-buy for my tastes, though it hardly ruins the entire film structurally. In addition, Michelle La as the daughter character is not especially good in the scenes she is featured in, which was perhaps why the only scenes I never felt entirely invested were the ones where she was front-and-center. Considering this is her first feature film role, that's perhaps simply inexperience coming to the fore, but it still hurts the film when her scenes are sandwich between a fantastic performance by John Cho.

Along with these problems with story and performances, the minuscule details between the lines of the film's internet setting are a tad fuzzy. Namely things regarding the service YouChat and how it is presented, along with the tiniest nitpicks in presentation like the mouse cursor moving so buttery-smoothly it became hard to buy. In addition, my feelings toward the film having a background score are a tad mixed, though I grew to accept it as the film went on. Simply a matter of tastes.

All of that said, "Searching" is a quite masterfully done thriller with an execution that is truly a marvel to behold. Never has this genre of found footage been able to crack the concept of painting a thrilling film through the scope of a computer screen until now. With the internet seemingly 'cracked' by these writers and directors, however, this film ends up a first of its kind and quite the investing ride to take at the theatre.

I highly recommend you see this film and support something so indie and so unique. It's really unlike anything that's in theatres right now~