Search (2018)

Directed by: Aneesh Chaganty | 100 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: John Cho, Sara Sohn, Alex Jayne Go, Megan Liu, Kya Dawn Lau, Michelle La, Joseph Lee, Dominic Hoffman, Connor McRaith, Debra Messing, Briana McLean

It is nevertheless a confrontational experience with the absurdly fast transience of life when we see Windows 95 as the operating program in the opening scene of ‘Searching’. Via Windows 95 to the Apple era, the viewer takes a bird’s-eye view of the childhood of Margot (Michelle La) with her parents David (John Cho) and Pamela (Sara Sohn). We see photos of her first day of school, videos of piano lessons and learn through a few detours that her mother recently passed away. It immediately kicks off the rest of the film: we don’t leave the world of telephone and computer screens in ‘Searching’. When Margot turns out not to have come home, a classic missing-person thriller unfolds in an inventive way, in which critical comments are made on the role of social media and parenthood.

In ‘Searching’ the story is thus told exclusively through telephone and computer screens. Now this approach is not entirely new: it has already been done with the mediocre teen horror film ‘Unfriended’ and series such as ‘Modern Family’ have already experimented with a ‘screen only approach’. Director Aneesh Chaganty (ironically working for Google before this) can’t prevent that things start to feel a bit forced in ‘Searching’ towards the end and the tricks feel a bit too omnipresent.

The fact that the film works is mainly due to the play of protagonist John Cho (known from several ‘Star Trek’ films and ‘Harold & Kumar’), who perfectly manages to guard the balance between paranoia and emotion. But also the playing of Michelle La and Debra Messing (best known for comedic roles, including in ‘Will and Grace’) is more than excellent. It’s also nice that Chaganty didn’t just make ‘Searching’ an inventive ‘screen-only thriller’; themes such as bereavement and parenthood are also well represented. The fast tempo and the many plot twists contribute to a chilling suspense, although the emotion is never lost sight of.

It is a bit of a shame that ‘Searching’ has to lose some tension towards the end. With a little bit of good will you can see the biggest twist coming early in the film and the director is just a bit too nice to his audience towards the end. It does not detract from the fact that ‘Searching’ is an oppressive and inventive thriller that, despite its minimalist approach, will keep the viewer on the edge of their seat throughout the entire playing time. The stark parallels with the Anne Faber case will also haunt you for a while, as will the implicit criticism of the ‘social mediatization’ of missing persons cases. An excellent thriller that plays a bit too much on the safe plot technically, but is inventive in the execution.