Searching utilizes a variant of the found footage subgenre popularized by the 2014 film Unfriended. The film is told entirely from the viewpoint of computer screens, smartphones, news footage, and hidden cameras. The filming style is used to tell the story of a father searching for his missing daughter with the help of his APPLE MAC computer. With the APPLE MAC’s NORTON ANTIVIRUS protection active, the father looks for clues to his daughter’s whereabouts using GOOGLE MAPS, FACEBOOK, TUMBLR, YOUTUBE, VENMO, and REDDIT among other websites and services.
Searching’s barebones concept sounds like an internet marketer’s wet dream. What better way to advertise then have your various product placements be the solution for a father trying to find and/or save his daughter’s life? Show off your products under the guise of storytelling—oh, what a devilish plan! There’s no shame in taking one look at Searching’s trailers and believing the film to be a gimmicky advertising scheme.
And you’d be right, but also oh, so very wrong.
Searching is indeed a massive product placement, but such crime can be forgiven, and quite easily I might add, because Searching does something with said products: utilizes them to their fullest to tell high-quality storytelling. Director Aneesh Chaganty turns what could have been a cheap advertising project disguised as a film into an exceptional mystery, edge-of-your-seat thriller that also provides some nice commentary on modern day internet culture. The key tipoff to Searching’s high quality is it’s casting of John Cho in the lead role. Cho is no stranger to exceptional films (he co-starred in one of my favorite films of 2017) and the fact that he—a mid-forties adult—was cast in the lead role is a good indicator that, unlike Unfriended, Searching is more than a teen popcorn flick.
Note: There are some minor spoilers ahead, but nothing that should ruin the mystery.
Searching opens with a brief backstory of its main family the Kims—father David (John Cho), mother Pamela (Sara Sohn) and daughter Margot (Michelle)—combined with a brief overview of the internet’s evolution. It starts with the old 90s Windows screen, followed by a montage of nostalgia fuel as Margot grows up alongside the internet. We see her go onto Addicting Games (and be bombarded by popups), gets spooked by the Scary Maze jump scare video, and become a Pokémon fan.
So, I need to pause here and give Searching some bonus nerd points for what Margot and her friend mention to be their favorite Pokémon. The film could have taken the easy route by mentioning some Generation I popular Pokémon like Pikachu, Jigglypuff, or Charizard, but no, Margot states her favorite Pokémon is Uxie—a Generation IV Pokémon who’s associated with time—while the friend states theirs is Kecleon, a Generation III chameleon-like Pokémon. The best part to such unusual shout outs is how both Pokémon subtly represent their chooser—Uxie associated with the daughter’s desire and Kecleon associated with the friend’s true nature.
The audience share in the funny moments as Margot grows up—such as when she looks up “what is entercourse?”—the touching moments such as Jim sleeping with his cancer-stricken wife in the hospital, and the tragic moments when Pamela dies from her disease. It’s a very effective opening that establishes the film’s main gimmick, develops the Kim family in a touching manner, and plants the seeds as to why they act certain ways later in the film.
Searching then spends no time getting to its main premise: Margot suddenly disappearing and Jim’s desperate search to find her. Searching puts the old saying “show don’t tell” to full use here. Jim’s mindset is shown through unsent messages he hesitantly deletes (similar in design to the video game Emily is Away). This occasionally leads to Searching’s most unexpected element: great comedy. For example, there’s a scene where Jim learns from another boy’s mother that Margot’s disappearance may be due to her going on an unspoken camping trip with friends. The scene ends with Jim calmly telling the mother—who is worried Margot didn’t tell JIm—that he and his daughter’s relationship is fine, only to immediately cut to a very longwinded freak-out text towards Margot, “Are you F***ing kidding me!?”, before deleting it to send a much more levelheaded, short and stern response.
When the film introduces Jim’s brother Peter (Joseph Lee), it doesn’t outright state his name or who he is (it’s not until the last third where Peter is directly referred to as Jim’s brother)—rather, it’s revealed through the computer’s call history window where the name Peter Kim is seen as Jim’s last contact. The film allows its audience to put two-and-two together here—since they saw the last person Facetime Jim, that must mean said person is Peter Kim, and since they share the last name it’s most likely a relative. Searching allows the audience to naturally figure out their relationship without spelling it out for them. When Margot’s disappearance turns serious and Jim calls in a missing person report, the computer screen shows Jim looking up California’s success-to-failure rates of missing person cases (also establishing where the film takes place), as well as the detective (Debra Messing) assigned to Margot’s case—searching her name to see if she’s competent and a mother as she claims. The audience gets a look into Jim’s state of mind all without the use of dialogue or even facial expressions.
There’s a creative sequence where Jim breaks into Margot’s Facebook account using Emails and phone security codes—the actual way an average human would accomplish such feat. Characters and their backstories are told through pictures that Jim searches online. The audience learns more about Margot, Jim, and their relationship through various videos that, likewise, serve as clues towards the thought-provoking mystery. The latter storytelling really deserves all the credit I can give—using the mystery’s progression to also paint a vivid picture of a father and daughter’s relationship, what was missing there to get to its current state, and the father’s character development.
Margot’s self-centered classmates receive characterization through such storytelling as well, showing little concern for her disappearance until she becomes state-wide news. It’s then that they suddenly change tune and—taking advantage of their few interactions with Margot—act mortified and sad at the loss of their “close friend”, gaining publicity and brief internet fame as a result. Searching is clever with its commentary on internet culture, showcasing the toxic side of the web with people—many anonymous—taking advantage of the situation (as seen above), making wild conspiracies about Margot’s disappearance despite knowing little of the facts, and/or sending cruel, insensitive remarks towards the Kim family. Chaganty, however, never lets such commentary overshadow the film’s central storyline or focus, showcasing it mainly as glossed over video comments, angry emails, and web search results—getting his point across without any heavy-handed messages disrupting the story’s flow.
Searching is excellent in its build up of tension and suspense, beautifully balanced with bits of unexpected comedy to catch viewers in an unexpected laugh. There’s a great scene where Jim discovers a guy who had been interacting with Margot before the disappearance. The suspenseful music builds as Jim views photos of the guy with guns and drugs. Jim calls up the guy and demands to know where he was the night Margot went missing as the thriller vibes rise to intense levels, only for the scene to cut to an Excel sheet where Jim types up a confirmation that the guy was at a Justin Bieber concert that night. I absolutely love this. I expected Jim to discover Margot had gotten herself into some deep s#@% with bad people and descend the dangerous, yet predictable rabbit hole to save her. The scene sends expectations for an absolute loop, however, by not only avoiding taking the plot down predictable territory but also getting in a hilarious bit of comedy gold.
The entire mystery is beautifully written, throwing me off track with some very clever misdirection that works well with the premise’s style. When the mystery is finally solved, it's all practicable. All the clues come together, the motives make sense, and the answer was always right under my nose the whole time. And yet, I was unable to figure it out until Jim does. That, for me, makes a great mystery—setting up enough signs throughout the story as to who did it and what happened, yet using enough subtlety and misdirection to hide the truth until the big reveal. Now I can understand people viewing the following second big reveal as contrived and/or farfetched, but by that point, I think the film has earned its right for some suspension of disbelief, particularly since said reveal effectively concludes Jim’s character arc. I was more than willing to give leniency towards the final surprise and found the entire last third to make for an incredibly satisfying conclusion.
Searching takes product placement and fully utilizes it to craft a great story. Its thrills are engagingly intense despite Jim never being in any real sense of danger, the mystery is beautifully written and woven into its premise, the acting is overall solid (Cho delivers an impressive performance), the unexpected comedy works surprisingly well without disrupting the plot, and there’s a heart to Jim’s journey that keeps the audience invested in Margot getting rescued. Searching is one of 2018's finest films, and the best film I've seen using embedded marketing since The Lego Movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment