Searching

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.

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

I was not planning on watching this but I saw the high rating on imdb and considering how bad most movies with this gimmick are it peaked my interest that people actually like this one. I am very surprised at just how good this movie was. I went in with low expectations despite how well received it was but this movie really did it right.

First thing first, they managed to get the internet right, or atleast as right as you can expect a movie to get it. It featured mostly real websites and stayed within the limits of reality when it comes to his snooping around the internet for clues.

Secondly the pacing is pretty good too with a solid story that keeps you engaged and offers surprises throughout.

While not the best acted movie, the acting is certainly solid enough to get through the movie and they manage to make you care about the characters in a short amount of time.

Overall I'm pleasently surprised and the high rating is a combination of the solid story and that fact someone managed to finally pull off this concept correctly. It definitely earned a bonus point for its uniqueness and willingness to be something different.

Amazing thriller- twists and turns. Just when you think the ending is too neat- there's another twist and another. Had me crying in the first 5 minutes and sobbing at the end. Original and gripping. This film is gonna be huge!

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.