How well do you know your child? I mean really know your child. Searching dares observe that you can live in same house and see your daughter every single day and still not know the first thing about what she loves. This will come as no surprise to fathers like me, but for those who lean towards the control freak side of the spectrum, Searching may leave you searching for answers.
David Kim (John Cho) is a single father. He wasn’t always a single father. I’m warning you right now: if you’ve seen Up, you’re gonna have the same reaction to the first ten minutes of each film. That would be enough to turn off my daughter; this much I do know about her. As Margot (Michelle La) approaches the end of high school, she and David have lived for a while without a mom in the house. This is probably one of these things you either talk about all the time or you don’t, ever. The Kims don’t.
One night, Margot doesn’t return from a study group. It takes David almost a full day to realize she never returned; he assumed she just got up and out earlier than he did. An untouched textbook yields suspicion that something is amiss. Of course, first, David checks her schedule – Margot is currently having a piano lesson, right? What’s that? Margot hasn’t taken a piano lesson for six months and has pocketed all the money. Oh. Well, how about that all-night study group last night? Stopped at 9 p.m. Oh. Ok, how about that friend of hers? Doesn’t have any friends. Oh. Huh, my daughter became Mormon three months ago. Oh. Ok, I made that last one up.
You want to scream: “Geez, dude! How can you know so little about the only other person who lives in your house?” But it’s actually pretty easy, isn’t it? Even when you care … even when you care a lot.
Now when you realize your teenage daughter has gone missing, what do you do after calling the police? You look through her stuff, right? Get some clues, right? Searching allows for a number of pretty good techno-challenged parent moments as dad goes through his daughter’s computer. Hmmm … She gave $2,500 to Venmo … What’s a ‘Venmo?’ “ Having looked at my own daughter’s laptop once, I believe I offered up the phrase “What the Hell?!” approximately every fifteen seconds before shutting it forever out of pure frustration.
I love that this film holds amusing premise that the nuclear trio had all been using the same family computer since Margot was in kindergarten … HA! Yeah, good luck with that one. A great deal of this film is seen through the computer’s eye; that will turn off a number of people. When done poorly, this effect 
makes for chaos, not unlike the “found footage” genre. Here, I found it very useful in describing plot points and getting on the same page as the protagonist. We see what he sees and can follow along watching his expression go from confused to desperate – which is how most of my own computer session go, btw; the shrewd among us can anticipate what he’ll do and where he’s going next.
Technically not a horror, Searching is as scary as any film I’ve seen this year. As David and Detective Vick (Debra Messing) piece together what they can of Margot’s life, David realizes how little he knows of his daughter and, more importantly, how little he knows what motivates his daughter. Could it happen to you? Of course it could. I found it oh-so-easy to sympathize with David’s parental annoyance slowly melding into frantic paranoia. Yes, I think Searching took one turn too many in the overwritten venue but I’m not complaining. In its own way, this film is as sharp as any in 2018, identifying and giving voice to some of the unspoken pitfalls of the modern world.
♪My baby skips the morning train
She takes off school for who knows when
She makes up stuff she did and then
I buy hook, line and sink her♫
Rated PG-13, 102 Minutes
Director: Aneesh Chaganty
Writer: Aneesh Chaganty, Sev Ohanian
Genre: Modern horror
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Doting fathers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Doting fathers
♪ Parody Inspired by “9 to 5 (Morning Train)”
