Searching blog post

I saw the new movie, Searching. And here is why you should see it too.

So, on Thursday, the new all-screens-only movie, Searching came out in my town. It has a limited release a week before in other cities, but not mine. I had been waiting or it to come out, so I went that Thursday night to watch it. There are many remarkable things about this movie that are fascinating. It made me really want to see it again, so that is what I did last night.

Do you remember back in the late 90s, when The Blair Witch Project came out? It was at a time when everyone did not have the Internet in their pocket. It was a time when only "traditional" slashers and thrillers were popular. Here is what The Blair Witch Project did. The trailer made the rounds, stating that the move was based on "real" found footage of a group of amateur movie-makers who were lost forever in the woods. The movie was to show edited versions of the clips they recorded while researching the Blair Witch Legend. This movie did a lot of things. First, it broke the rules of film-making; clean lines and perfectly edited and stable shots were no longer required. The shaky camera and raw footage added to the terror of the film, and made it seem more realistic in a way. Shortly after this movie's release, many other "found footage" movies were released- all on the same premise of being totally real. In fact, when I did a quick Google search of "found footage horror movies," there were over 100 listed. We had movies like Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, The Devil Inside. All of them really being made possible due to the rampant success of Blair Witch Project.

Which leads me to this- the reason I bring all that up.

Searching is not found footage at all, (and it is not like the Unfriended series), but I believe it has the potential to change the movie making landscape yet again with its innovative approach. It is a a movie that is told on all screens and only on screens, which is much the way we live our lives now. It is told through YouTube videos, live newscasts, streaming services, recorded videos, Facebook searches, email and text exchanges, screencasts, FaceTimes, and surveillance cameras. I believe we just may see a rash of these movies coming out after the acclaim of Searching.

Searching does not claim to be a "real" story in the way Blair Witch and others did, but it does not need that claim to be interesting. (Plus we all have Google in our pockets anyway). Anyone watching it can see how very real this could actually be. Not just the story itself, of a missing teen, but the way the story unfolds.

Searching is more than a novelty film based on a soon-to-be-new-genre. It has a genuine story, very real characters, and mostly plausible events. There are twists (many, not just one) and although I guessed the ending during the first third of the movie, I would say there were still some surprises along the way.

It is a movie that also makes you think; it made me reflect on how much of our time is really spent in front of screens. For people like me, who work online, it is really most of my waking day. And when I am not working, I am scrolling Facebook, watching videos, sending text messages. The movie also made me think about true crime in a different way. I am fairly certain I figured out part of the ending because I consume so much true crime media. We are given so many details about things, bombarded with news, so much so that we often get the wrong stories, and jump to the wrong conclusions. Or we get partial truths, or lots of details, and not the big picture.

So these are the reasons I think you should see Searching. It will make you think and give me someone to talk to about it.

See you on the screens!