Sky Cinema Premiere throws up some junk movies from time to time. In an effort to churn out regular premieres, Sky lets a few bits of junk make their way onto our screens. One of the latest movies to feature is Searching, but I’ve got to admit, it’s quite good.
What’s Searching About?
Searching is a 2018 thriller about a father following a trail of online evidence and social media posts to find his missing sixteen-year-old daughter. Like I said, a parent’s worst nightmare. It took me a few minutes to even notice the film was going this way, but the entire movie is shot completely on computer screens or smartphone screens. It’s quite remarkable how director Aneesh Chaganty shot this entire movie. It’s really cool, and as a result quite a success. The unusually low budget of $1 million returned $75 million worldwide.
Is Searching Worth A Watch?
In short, Searching is very good. It’s unpredictable, well shot and, as I mentioned earlier, gripping. It’s also very relatable and in many ways portrays the dangers of teens living online. Now, I’m not into scare-mongering and technology-based movies regularly go down these routes. One of the best examples being The Circle which just goes off on one about how evil big tech companies are. Sure, often true, but also overly dramatic. Searching, instead, focuses on lapses in security that many of us are guilty of. Irresponsible social media posts that many of us are guilty of. And online naivety that many of us are guilty of.
People Can Be Dickheads
The reason Searching is so good, is because it makes you think. It makes you think about how you post things online. It makes you think about the unbelievable power of the online world. In one way, it made me consider all the bad about social media. There’s lots of stuff in there about how people become absolute dickheads and lose all humanity during times of tragedy. Take a step back from the keyboard and you realise there’s like family trawling the internet for any hint of evidence that might help find a lost loved one.
Online Isn’t To Blame
But then, Searching also made me consider that social media and online is powered by people. People can be dickheads, but people can also be incredible. The internet is a mightily powerful tool in the right hands, but we often just focus on the negative. Even when it comes to the news coverage of the missing girl in Searching. They know people have a morbid curiosity in the worst side of humanity. As long as we give horrible media outlets our attention, they’ll continue to cover the worst side of humanity without a care for the impact it has on victims and grieving families.
Searching: The Verdict
I’ve had a soft spot for the lead actor in Searching for a long time. Many remember John Cho from Harold and Kumar or American Pie, but he’s matured a lot and in Searching, he delivers an incredible effort.
Searching will lead you on quite the journey through a fathers despair and he tries to piece together the truth from fragments of social media stories. I thought I would hate this movie, but I actually think it’s a great watch. If you’ve got Sky Cinema this is definitely worth a bit of your weekend.
