Searching Poster

Searching (2018)

Drama | Thriller 
Rayting:   7.7/10 142.5K votes
Country: Russia | USA
Language: English
Release date: 6 September 2018

After his 16 year old daughter goes missing, a desperate father breaks into her laptop to look for clues to find her.

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User Reviews

jg_1977 3 September 2018

I just got out of seeing Searching, a "screen life" movie written and directed by Aneesh Chaganty, and I can't overstate how much I enjoyed it. Why I liked this movie can be summed up quite succinctly with four simple words: compelling story, engaging presentation. Allow me to elaborate.This movie has an incredibly well written story. It starts with a heartfelt sequence of home movies that endears you to all of our main characters in minutes, quite similar to the beginning of Up (2009). It then unfolds a mystery, layer by layer, until you are quite literally on the edge of your seat, in anticipation for the final reveal. At no point along the way does it ever really slow down or get dull. Everything that happens is meaningful and contributes to either the narrative or the tone. A big part of the story working so well has to do with the excellent performance from John Cho. The entire premise of the story hinges upon his performance as he is the emotional core of it all. Without him, this movie might not be nearly as good. In addition to having a tight, well-written screenplay, Searching also is presented in an incredibly fascinating way. Chaganty uses the restrictions of "screen life" to his favor by creating inventive and new ways to present information. In doing so, he truly draws the viewer into the perspective of John Cho's character as everything is essentially shown from his point of view. This heightens both the tension as we learn things at the same time he does, as well as makes his character that much more empathetic. 2018 has had a pretty stellar summer in terms of the quality of movies that we've seen, and Searching thankfully doesn't break the trend. It wouldn't surprise me if this becomes the sleeper hit of the summer. It's quite good. Do yourself a favor and go see it!

Platypuschow 24 November 2018

Fmovies: When Searching was initially annouced I was excited, a John Cho straight role and in that unique presentation style? Count me in, this was on paper destined to be something special.

Sadly whenever I hype a movie up like this they tend to fall flat, but not Searching. No, no Searching lived up to my high expectations and the John Cho movie demonstrated that this is one of those guys like Ryan Reynolds and Will Smith who truly can do it all.

The whole movie plays out through pc windows and camera footage. Yes it has been done before with the likes of Unfriended (2014) but they took the concept to the next level here and it works considerably better than you'd imagine.

John Cho delivers an emotional tour de force with some of the best written material I've seen in years. It's so clever, so intricate and just when you think you've got it all figured out another spanner is thrown into the works to make you re-evaluate everything you've seen so far.

As I'm getting older I'm becoming a harsher critic because I've seen everything before. Movies like Searching reaffirm my faith in the industry, it's fresh, it's fascinating and doesn't fall for any of the usual Hollywood tropes.

By far Searching is the best film I've seen in a longtime, a true unconditional triumph and I applaud everyone involved. Outstanding!

The Good:

Very unique cinematography

Powerful performance by Cho

Incredibly smart writing

The Bad:

Nothing springs to mind

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

There is hope for Hollywood yet

John Cho is one of the most underappreciated actors in the industry

martimusross 12 August 2018

It started slowly as the characters were revealed and like Nordic Noir the narrative drive was the meticulous investigation on the internet. For those on social media this was brilliant for those more technologically naive this was a bore. The silence and mouse clicks let to the suspense for me others thought it made the movie slow. The acting was brilliant and you felt his pain and frustration. A really great movie with an unexpected twist, I loved it.

stuartwoodley-58722 19 August 2018

Searching fmovies. Amazing thriller- twists and turns. Just when you think the ending is too neat- there's another twist and another. Had me crying in the first 5 minutes and sobbing at the end. Original and gripping. This film is gonna be huge!

soulsk8ter225 28 June 2018

The word "gimmick" can be thrown around to describe a major element of a film that changes up the ordinary tropes we'd expect from a rather straightforward flick. There is 3D, timeline splicing, animation, found footage, you name it. Some films almost even fall into these places as a genre. When they do, you get the inkling that the people responsible for thinking up the movie likely have these elements in mind at the forefront with the story as an afterthought. Only when that occurs do I call those elements gimmicky. And it's not that a gimmick is a bad thing, but if that is what you rely on to make your story compelling, it will often become a crutch for poor storytelling or one-and-done enjoyment. Sometimes it is done right, in which case the gimmick works... but most of the time it has that negative connotation for good reason.

However, there is another breed of films where you can get that feeling that a story was thought up, and ultimately it was decided that the best way to tell that story was by use of something like 3D, etc. When that happens, it is no longer a gimmick nor does it fall into that genre, so to speak. It is just the best way to tell that story, even though the story could work very well without it. I am no longer attracted to the film because of the device being used, but rather I can almost ignore that it's happening because I am so engraved in the story being told.

Within the found footage narrative realm has come screencasting, where we see the world through somebody's computer or phone screen. The first and only film of this variety I have seen was Unfriended, which takes place on one user's laptop screen as she does a group webcam chat. This played off as a gimmick because it was the only way to tell the story. Searching is now the second screencasting film I have seen. It has a bit of a hybrid feel though because there are jumps to other footage needed to tell the story (perhaps from the news or something) and there is also a score that the characters otherwise wouldn't hear.

Gimmick is also the last term I would use to describe what it does. Of course, this is plainly because the story is what drives the film and could be done without this style, but also because this style is doing more than tell a story: it is telling of our generation's attachments to/reliance on technology, the internet and most of all social media. The right audience will connect with this very well because they will feel very comfortable and familiar. This is where the film gets to breathe and even provide what one could call comedic relief (in just how real it all is to our technological experiences).

Director and co-writer Aneesh Chaganty came up with something extraordinary, and very smartly crafted this film into something where the main character's (played by John Cho) computer and phone are not devices (no pun intended), but they are now characters. There is an inaudible dialogue between him and screen, and the audience fills the gaps of what each of them are saying to each other. I say the story could be told without the screencasting in play, but the audience would need another way of being exposed information through needless dialogue, either to oneself or other characters. That, or we would still be looking at computer screens for a very long time, or time would have to be served filling scenes in other ways, so restructuring the screenplay would be required (which is possible, but I think Chaganty found the best way to tell his story).

zhangshikai 21 September 2018

Thanks to all the hype of crazy rich Asians, this film got buried by all that other movie's hype. I believe this is what real representation is all about, when you have a role that doesn't need to be played by Asian but is played by Asian!

this movie have better direction better story, better cinematography and better actors than crazy rich Asians, but it doesn't have the hype generated by the stars, but this movie is what true film making is all about! keeping up with the times and the tech, bravo!

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