Searching (2018)

(On Cable TV, March 2019) Technology changes movies, specifically changes the grammar of movies, and after more than a decade of staring at computer screens, it makes sense to see the rise of a sub-genre of films executed as if from a computer screen from start to finish. Searching comes hot on the heels of films such as Open Windows and Unfriended (the last of which shares producer Timur Bekmambetov), but it manages to feel like something more than a cinematic experiment. It’s clearly more confident in what it can do, and so the execution incorporates different computers screens (to show the passage of time), zooms, flashbacks and multimedia variance. Even from a more nuts-and-bolts narrative perspective, it’s significantly stronger in terms of characterization, suspense, plot details and Easter eggs (I caught parts of the alien-invasion subplot, but not all of it). John Cho is quite good as a grieving father doing all he can to find his missing daughter—the first two thirds of the film are more about style than substance, but the last act eventually gets to the point of delivering some emotional payoffs as well. Searching is compelling viewing, paced for the Internet era and clearly eliding details that are taken for granted by modern audiences. (I’m having fun imagining what an average 1950s viewer would make of the film.)  Some of the new film grammar invented by writer-director Aneesh Chaganty is quite clever, and so is the way that it makes use of the big Internet structures that we now consider part of our lives. I have no clue how well this is going to age, but I suspect that at the very least it’s going to be a fascinating time capsule of circa-2018 Internet use. (Complete with concern trolling, social media hypocrisy and anonymous attacks.)  I liked Searching quite a bit, and as more than just a showpiece of a different kind of way to tell a story—although that counts for it as well.