Searching 2018 - Movie Review

What would you do if your teenage daughter suddenly disappeared and none of the people you would normally reach out to, have a clue where she is? What would you do when you realise that the little girl you have loved and nurtured all your life is someone you don’t know any more? What would you do when you are so overcome with the guilt of not having seen this coming, that it paralyses you into inaction and desperation? What would you do when you feel that you’re all alone in this world and no one can really help you?

Well, simple. Do what every teenager would do. Go online!

#Searching is the story of a father (David Kim, played by John Cho of Harold and Kumar fame) in desperate search of his missing teenage daughter over the course of 5 tense days. Not exactly a new plot, actually. Liam Neeson is probably yawning at this point.

But the impact of the movie is in the way the story is told - almost entirely through the multiple digital screens that are an indispensable part of our everyday lives. Right from the very first scene, we are following the lives of a Korean-American family through Facebook posts, video blogs, and home videos. Just like a social media timeline, in a quick few minutes we know the entire history of this family - from wedding to child growing to mom’s long battle with cancer and upto the present day. The present day story then continues, of the single dad and his search for his daughter, told through iChats, Face times, Facebook posts, Insta stories, private chat and broadcast sites, Twitter, Youtube, and not-to-forget the good old TV. 

What is amazing is how deep human emotions are portrayed simply through the use of screens by the characters. When the dad types a message but then erases it to write something that he thinks will be better accepted by his daughter, you can feel every parent in the audience sighing. When the missing girl story goes viral along with an explosion of superficial and fake sympathy by strangers, you can feel the frustration that the dad is feeling. Even the 3 ominous missed calls displaying on the screen from the night before, put a chill down your spine.

And then of course, is the edge-of-the-seat central plot, of how David slowly but surely puts the different digital pieces of the puzzle together to solve the mystery, along with special detective Rosemary Vick (played by Debra Messing). As David uncovers one clue that leads to another, he gets deeper and deeper into the private life of his teenage daughter that he didn’t know existed. Finally leading to the climax of solving the mystery. Only thing is don't hold your breath for the climax, the only thing that disappoints.  

The completely new-age take to storytelling is not because it is a ‘digital thriller’. In fact that would be the least of the things. Many movies and programmes have dabbled in that. The reason this movie is modern because it doesn’t make a big deal of words like digital, online, internet. Better still, it doesn’t condemn the “online” world as the evil of our times! The film treats the various gadgets as a natural extension of our physical selves. They are our ‘extended senses’ that are an integral part of our modern day lives, without which we wouldn’t be able to see, hear, feel, smell, touch, think. In a world, where the online and offline lives seamlessly merge into each other, forming part of a complete and perfectly natural whole. 

This is what makes for an effortless-yet-engaging movie. Where technology becomes the tool to tell the story of people and their lives, story of parents and their relationship with teenage children, story of the bitter-sweet journey of raising children, story of the constant guilt and heartache that comes with being a parent, story of the mortal fear of losing your child, and the story of forever searching…

In short, a must watch!