Searching Movie Review

Suhansid Srikanth

Aneesh Chaganty's SEARCHING holds the most weakest tool of storytelling as its primal strength. While by many filmmakers, displaying the information of an incident over texts, video calls or monitor screens is basically considered as a gimmick to hop into lazy narrative.. the entire film that's shot from the point of view of a smartphone and a laptop wins you over in its fitting need for it. Ten minutes into the film.. you forget the virtual world in which the story is presented and dive in right into the emotions.

The plot of Searching is an age old one line.. a daughter who doesn't share a that good relationship with her father goes missing, and how the father traces her back forms the rest of the plot. But the way it is told along with the emphasis in unusual psychological traits is what makes it intriguing. And it also gives you an insight of how the world or say the social media reacts to anything and everything. On its go, it crosses on points like what can be a huge personal tragedy to someone is merely a debate material, a hashtag or a topic to Buzzfeed! I smirked when some friend of Margot posted about something he helped for her and we are scrolled down to a comment that says "Proud grandmother". A guy who doesn't want to reveal that he went to a Bieber concert.. Obituary sites dying to offer a prayer before the case is even closed.. YouTube channels that posts videos titled 'Crazy Dad'.. Reddit accounts that write theories on how Kim could have murdered Margot and faked it all.. It is in this slice view of human or inhuman perversions, awkwardness.. the film becomes a lens to the contemporary times we are in.

The initial tracking of her Facebook account.. and when the password is protected, tracking through her gmail.. when it is also protected, tracking through her yahoo is weirdly funny as it projects the dark dissociation of a generation. When nothing helps him and someone asks him to check her Tumblr account, we are equally sad when Kim asks, "What is Tumblr?". This distance between a father and a daughter, perhaps two generations that Kim tries to understand, peep into and cross becomes the core of the film.

The first time we see Detective Vick offering to help Kim, we see Kim scrolling through her Facebook profile that has a cover photo reading 'Mom's love is the best'. It is subtly crossed yet it affirms an assuring hand to Kim and the narrative of a father struggling to find his daughter back. And it is not just a character defining moment.. but we get it together when we are revealed to who she is at the end. The consolations she offers despite her true motives are humane. As much as she loves his son and does this all.. she tries her best to help Kim in understanding that it is not his fault. The flashback incident about her son narrated by Vick is an abstractly nerved character detailing.

There are few loose ends that sort of put you on and off. For example, after all the crazy mind game.. we are all of the sudden opened to a scene where Margot is rescued from a tropic hill valley. The super extreme plan set by Vick is convincing for the moment while she narrates it all as dialogues.. but falls weak when you think of it in a sequence. So is the suspection on Peter, Margot's Uncle. Kim setting up CCTV cameras to get over information from him, based on the texts he has shared with Margot that has secret convos like 'Last night was fun'.. goes on to a distracting zone when it is about weed. And the set up story by Vick for the murderer is vaguely convincing not just to Kim but to us as well.

But, one of my favorite moments in the film is at the end, when Kim, after sending the usual morning texts to Margot.. sends her a text, "I am proud of you!".. thinks for a second and sends "Mom would be too". Earlier, in one such scene in the beginning, he types, "Mom would be too" and deletes it as he don't want to churn out a sad memory for his daughter. But it is after all the tragedy, he realizes that the presence of her mother in their life affirms their bond. These little things make SEARCHING a relevant cinematic analysis of our times.

Bottomline

Aneesh Chaganty's SEARCHING is an experience that begins and just keeps growing on you. With every new thing that pops out of nowhere in Kim's journey to trace his daughter back.. we are revealed to ugly faces of the contemporary world and the society we are building through technology.

Rating: 3/5