Searching- Review

Severely underwhelmed is probably the most accurate way of describing how I feel in regard to this film. I went in with absolutely no knowledge and came out of it with a headache and the will to never touch a computer again (how hypocritical of me). The reason for this is simply because this entire film evolved through the use of computer and mobile phone technology, particularly webcam. I had quite a few issues with this but I'll get on to that later.

In this digital thriller, a local investigation that is seemingly endless begins to circle around a missing teen and a life that she has so meticulously kept hidden from others. With no other options left, her distraught father, David Kim, invades her privacy and looks into her computerised world for clues.

To be completely blunt, the acting in this film felt so rigid and overdramatised. The first glimpse of this was through Michelle La. Judging from the limited information I could find about her, it appears that she's relatively new to acting. The first and only scene portraying Margot with verbal and non-verbal characterisation came across as very artificial and unbelievable. Aside from this, the only other time she communicated was through text messages. Because of the nature of this film and the heavy use of technology as a way to show the actors...acting, I wasn't able to develop any kind of connection with her character. She also had very little time on screen anyway so any chance of empathy or understanding for her actions and character backstory was impossible.

John Cho portrayed the role David Kim, Margot's father and a widow. Out of all the cast here, I think he did the best with what he had but it was neither greater, nor less than average. It's difficult for me to get out anything more than an "ehh" here because there was a severe lack of energy and substance in this film.

Finally, my most hated performance in this film...Debra Messing as Det. Rosemary Vick. Man did she grind my gears with her lack of ingenuity and intellect for her role. Let's imagine that there's a checklist for the basic requirements needed to portray the role of a detective (or any role for that matter), Debra literally achieved the bare minimum. It was flat and basic and when she decided it needed some intensity and seriousness, she went over the top in a very unflattering way. I don't imagine that a detective would answer a bloody FaceTime call to an erratic father at 2am. Feel free to change my mind. The point I'm getting at here is, you can't take roles too seriously and you can't take them seriously at all if this is the kind of outcome you're going to get. It didn't work. Underwhelmed, I repeat as I punch the keyboard.

So back to the use of technology for the film. I understand the general appeal, I really do, but there was just a multitude of problems because of it. I'll remind you all, I had no prior knowledge as to what this film was going to be about aside from the tagline. In my head, I pictured some kind of a mystery or crime thriller film with ACTUAL acting in it. Not through the perspective of a webcam or surveillance footage. So my issues with this begin here: 1) There wasn't any physical acting onscreen, nothing like you'd expect of a normal film. 2) The Kim family seemed to favour Apple technology, being that they had iPhones connected to iMessage, MacBook laptops and FaceTime (as part of Apple). So why is it that they had a Windows PC? An Apple-friendly family with a Windows computer appears to be a complete conflict of interest and is quite useless. Perhaps it could have been used for the aesthetic, the need to be cool with a platform less used by people of a younger demographic. Seriously though, a child in the audience said "What's Windows XP?" And 3) There was way too much going on with the screens that we weren't able to form connections to characters appropriately. Even the characters didn't seem to bond too well. There was limited screen time where multiple characters of importance were together in the same room at the same time. It left me with a headache and I felt so sick of computers for a lifetime.

More so with non-tech related issues with this film; it just didn't make any sense. The director had to dumb it all down for us as if we weren't from a technology-friendly world. There were so many useless twists and turns that took up most of the film and general information and events that didn't make sense. Plus, the acting.

Of course, there were a few positive things about this film. They did make use of other sorts of cameras (not just webcam) like surveillance footage, news coverage and camcorder. For the last half hour it was getting somewhere too. It became mildly interesting and then the ending happened and I was back to square one, bored again.

I honestly wouldn't recommend this film to anyone, nor would I encourage someone to pay to see this film (which is why I'm glad I didn't have to). Unless video perspective in the form of thriller genre is your thing, probably best to wait until this comes out on a streaming service before satisfying your curiosity.

Score: 4/10.