Touching & Tense ‘Search’ Turns A Gimmicky Premise Into Something Cinematic [Sundance Review]

“Search” has been dubbed as the movie “that’s completely set on a computer screen.” Ok, fine. However, an inventive gimmick can only go so far if the story doesn’t involve or make you care for the stakes at hand. Making his feature-debut, Aneesh Chaganty, a former Google commercials creator, overcomes those hurdles with this touching and tense movie worthy of Hitchcock. It uses all the technological forms of communication at our disposal to tell a whodunit that keeps you guessing until the very end. Despite the aforementioned “gimmick,” Chaganty’s movie is very much cinematic.

A moving montage opens the film, as we journey through a laptop’s history that shows us Margot Kim (Michelle La) growing up before our eyes. The past of her parents David (John Cho) and mother Pamela (Sarah Sohn), also come to light, particularly the tragedy of Pamela’s lymphoma diagnosis, which we learn through videos of hospital visits and calendar appointments, she succumbs to.

As many of us do, David has a job that keeps him glued to the computer, and it also happens to be a convenient device for Chagnaty to tell his story. The overly devoted David keeps tabs on his daughter through video chat, always in the know about where she is and what’s happening. One evening, Margot phones him middle of the night, and the following day David receives her missed calls, but she can’t be reached. Even more, she’s left her laptop at home, isn’t answering her messages, hasn’t shown up for her piano lessons, and eventually David reports Margot’s disappearance to the police. Enter Rosemary (Debra Messing), a detective who seems like the perfect candidate for the job. She rolls up her sleeves and gets right to work, but as is common with most missing persons cases, the more time that passes, the more likely it is that everyone has a homicide on their hands. The intersection between technology and procedural is where “Search” really starts cooking.

The brilliance of “Search” lies in the way David works his way around Margot’s social media network to find his own clues. He scrambles through his daughter’s Facebook, Gmail, Videocast, and Instagram accounts and logs in to find messages, and reach out to acquaintances that might know a thing or two about the last night she was seen. As with any parent diving into their child’s social media world, David finds out things about his daughter that make him second-guess her honesty, and make him and Rosemary second guess their instincts about what really happened.

Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian deliver wonders on both the technical and narrative ends of “Search,” but editors Will Merrick and Nick Johnson do an astounding job as well. How some of the scenes were pulled off is still a mystery to this critic, and all the better for it, as the film has plenty of flair and tension to suck just about anybody into its story. “Search” does begin to lose steam near its very end, but nonetheless, the twists keep it fresh, alive, and clickable.  [B+]

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