Searching…

A few days I had the opportunity to go and view the film Searching starring John Cho and Debra Messing. I saw the trailer a few months back and as soon as I saw it I felt that the film would be an instant classic. I’ve seen films that hook you and this one got me from the beginning. I am not going to do a scene by scene analysis but rather what some of the implications of the film could be. The basic story of the film is that the main character, David Kim, played by John Cho goes on a search for his missing daughter. He starts putting together the pieces of the puzzle together by looking at where she was, who were friends were, and how she spent the majority of her time. The character of Margot, played Michelle La, we see has more behind her than just a computer screen. I want to start with what was an important part of the story and that was the death of Margot’s mother, Pam. She ended up dying of Lymphoma and the process thereafter of her death had a strong impact of the story. For one, we start to see the unraveling of Margot’s character as she starts to exude strange behavior such as not attending her piano lessons and rather chatting with a boy that needs money on a vlog that she has. We also start to see where Margot would go which is actually a lake that is nearby here named Barbosa Lake. One last point that is not emphasized enough is how she starts to lie to her dad about where she is at night time which is another part of the film. This part where she lies becomes an important part of the story just because from there is where everything unravels. We find out that Margot was originally going to a study group but that it would go till late. It turns out that she was covering for the boy that she was talking to through the video chat. She wanted to give him money so that he could treat his mother who was going through cancer. I found this whole story fascinating because it just shows how much our social media can be hiding some facts that may not be known. The film also shows how much we can rely on total strangers that we are communicating with through an internet portal can have our total trust. I myself went social media less for a few years before turning to Instagram. I like Instagram because it’s a photo with a quick description and you can follow as many people as you’d like in that whole process. A tiny detail that is seen in the film is when many of Margot’s friends say that they never really saw her interact with anyone.

Her classmates classify her as a loner that never socially interacted with many students. However, we get to a point in the film where one of the classmates (who earlier had said they weren’t really friends), starts to say that they wish they would just find her already. This scene made me realize how much true friends come out and stick out with you till the end and not just when it is convenient for them. As soon as she launches this heart felt crying, I felt the response felt forced and there were almost a million likes for the response itself. There are two instances in the film where we start to see more suspects that point to more and more that they may be the suspects themselves. We see most of the film through a computer screen and we see how David starts the search for his daughter and any help that he can get is much appreciated. But, we also see the backlash from some of the folks that are following the story because we see his support as sort of indicative of how he may be guilty as well. David’s brother, Peter, is also implied as a suspect with Peter providing weed to Margot to get through some of the stress with her mother dying and what not.   Anyway, it turns out that one of the twists of the film is that the detective that is assigned to the case, played by Debra Messing, Rosemary Vick was the one whose son was talking to Margot the whole time. You see how she manipulates the crimes and you can tell somewhat from the beginning that something is up with her because when David starts to get somewhere she is standing in his way. There were two instances where this happened. The first one was when they discover Margot’s car was discovered by Barbosa Lake and they say she has been declared missing. We also see this in another instance when Vick manipulates a murder confession by a man who has just gotten out of prison.

At the end of the film, it is revealed that Vick was responsible for what was responsible throughout most of the film. There is a little hint dropped towards the beginning of the film where her son was mischievous and was a troublemaker but I dismissed it immediately. The twist goes to further reveal that her son Robert, was feeling guilty of the money he had been given and he shoved Margot into the lake that was mentioned earlier. Overall, we start to see to the little intricacies of what the impact of technology is these days. We can go through death and we may not know the impact it has on our children even though it may seem as if they are okay. There is an instance in the film when Margot goes to show the boy in the film pictures of her mom and you start to see that maybe she hasn’t gotten over her death. I also liked the film because you see the characters grow from being central plot points to the story itself rather than the story dictating how the characters motives are seen in the film. John Cho and Debra do an excellent job in having us believe as an audience how real the movie felt. For anyone looking for a movie, to watch definitely a good recommendation.