‘Searching’ for child and not liking what you find
John Cho lives a parent’s worst nightmare — the disappearance of his only child — in the effective, surprising found-footage thriller “Searching.”
Cho’s David Kim, a recent
widower who has taken a tough parental attitude to better combat feelings of inadequacy, reports to police that his daughter Margot (Michelle La) hasn’t come home.
Detective Vick (Debra Messing) reports that she’s gotten the case in rotation and orders a search when Margot’s car turns up minus Margot in a California lakeside spot.
The frustrated father goes to Margot’s computer and social media trail and finds a daughter he never knew. Margot was leading a complex life that becomes another example of a wounded family member trying to cope with the loss of a mother and a damaged dad.
If “Searching” is perhaps a familiar puzzle to solve — although no one could be expected to follow the outof-left-field final revelations — it’s also a deftly presented one.
Director and co-writer Aneesh Chaganty tells this story entirely on screens of one kind or another — mobile phones, TV reports, laptops, social media. It’s frustrating when you discover 15 minutes in that “Searching” is not going to stop and become a conventionally told mystery, but remain viewed at a distance as a desperate father tries to get closer and closer to the truth.
Cho’s very good, as is Messing, who combines a professional hunter of lost souls’ detachment with a veteran’s awareness that the odds are strongly in favor that there will not be a happy reunion.
Anyone trying to jump ahead of the detective and deduce what happened, one clue: Think of most everyone as a suspect.