New technical exercises are always a crapshoot in cinema. Because if your all-shot-in-one-take, first-person-shooter, found-footage or 3D film doesn't have a solid emotional core to it, all you’ve got is an empty gimmick, and audiences will turn on you fairly quickly. Searching is a new film told from the perspective of a computer desktop and iPhone cameras, and luckily it has a very strong emotional base to work from.
 
David Kim (John Cho) is an ordinary father. His daughter Margot (Michelle La) is an ordinary high school student who has piano class, AP Bio — the whole bit. Lately, father and daughter have grown apart; about two years before the film begins, David’s wife and Margot’s mother, Pam, passed away after a battle with cancer. One day, after a long night of study group, Margot goes missing, and David is forced to look into Margot’s online life. There he discovers that his daughter is not the girl he thought she was. Describing any more would be spoiling the fun, but a detective (Debra Messing) gets involved and there are several twists and turns and red herrings. The fact that this simple mystery is told through computer screens is completely incidental to the proceedings, because underneath it all is an emotional story about what parents will do for their children.
 
Right out of the gate, Searching is a marvel of visual storytelling. Within the first ten minutes, director and co-writer Aneesh Chaganty lays out the story of the Kim family. From Margot being born to Pam’s death. This is all told through home movies, webcam videos, AIM conversations, and even desktop background. This opening section could be its own really strong short film. The fact that it sets up so much of the movie to come is a testament to Chaganty’s talent, and based on his work here, he’s going to be huge in the future.
 
The cast is great, but really this is Cho’s movie and he carries the whole thing. He has to do a lot on his own, and mostly talking to a screen. Even ordinary people are unnatural when they’re on webcams, but Cho gives a nuanced, heartbreaking performance as a dad trying to find out about his daughter. When he realizes he might have been the one to push his daughter away, it’s a staggering moment and makes you wish Cho would be the center of more films. Debra Messing is fun in the no-nonsense detective role, but she does manage to give her character different shades, which adds to her performance. By design, we don’t see much of Michelle La; however, in the bits we do see, she gives Margot a haunted enigmatic quality, which adds to the mystery.
 
The script by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian is a tight mystery, with some intriguing twists and turns, and it allows for bits of humor as well. I have to admit I did see a few of the twists coming, and the end reveal seemed fairly obvious to me —but that’s okay, as the characters and emotional story kept me engaged throughout. Considering so much of the film is told through a computer desktop, this is more of a director’s showcase anyway.
 
Searching is a tight little thriller with a very engaging emotional core, where the technical gimmick is used to enhance the story and never detracts from it. And we can expect to see big things from first time feature director Aneesh Chaganty.
 
Three out of Four stars