Searching (2018)

There’s been a recent tirade of ‘online’ films in recent years, redefining the genre of cyber crime somewhat. Recently I saw Antitrust (2001), the film playing out in front of computer screens. Almost twenty years on comes Searching, a film that takes place within the technology itself. The entire runtime plays out through the cameras of laptops, phones and CCTV cameras, amongst others. Although, as I say there’s been a few of these recently, this is the first I’ve seen in this format, and Aneesh Chaganty’s thriller is pretty effective. John Cho (he of American Pie ‘MILF’ fame) plays David Kim, whose daughter Margot goes missing. After attaining the help of a detective, David hunts through the family computer for any information that might help his cause, and discovers a trove of things he never knew or suspected about his daughter. Searching is gripping almost to its conclusion, and what I found particularly astonishing isn’t what you can find about someone online- we all know everyone knows everything about us already- but what information people offer up to their own systems. A lot of information about the Kim’s can be found on their desktop computer but David finds more intriguing info from a streaming site that Margot had been using. The site invites users to film themselves live answering questions asked through text from other online users. Margot is lonely, she’s struggled since the death of her mother, but why on earth anyone would go live in front of a camera to any number of online users, none of which you know or can see, to answer random questions is simply beyond me. The worrying and bizarre thing about this is that these streaming sites do exist; accessed and used by millions. The seemingly insatiable need for people who spend their lives online to seek approval from utter strangers seems to sadly grow by the day, but this doesn’t appear to be Margot’s end goal in fairness; she is simply lonely, sad and confused after her mother’s death. Thankfully this sort of irritating online set up adds to the excitement of Searching as a thriller, and despite a rather unsatisfactory ending of sorts, Searching is an interesting premise carried out very well. 7.2/10