Searching (film)

David Kim lives in San Jose, California with his daughter Margot. His wife Pamela was diagnosed with lymphoma and died before Margot entered high school. One day, David cannot get in contact with Margot. Believing she has gone to her piano lesson, David calls the piano instructor, but he is informed that Margot cancelled her lessons six months prior. He discovers that she was pocketing the money and transferred it to a now-deleted Venmo account. He calls the police and the case is assigned to Detective Rosemary Vick. Accessing Margot's accounts, David learns that she had become a loner since Pamela's death. Vick reports that Margot made a fake ID and shows traffic camera footage of her car outside of the city, suggesting she may have run away.

David, unconvinced, discovers that Margot had been using a streaming site and befriended a young woman called "fish_n_chips". Vick reports back that fish_n_chips is innocent, having been sighted in Pittsburgh at the time of the disappearance. From Margot's Tumblr, David finds that she frequently visited Barbosa Lake, which is near the highway she was last seen. At the lake, he finds her Pokémon keychain on the ground. The police locate her car underwater. Her body is not inside, but there is an envelope containing the piano lesson money.

After an altercation David has with a boy who claimed to know where Margot is, Vick tells him he can no longer participate in the investigation. Undeterred, David visits a site that displays the crime scene photographs and notices his brother Peter's jacket. He then discovers text messages between Margot and Peter, hinting that they might have had an incestuous relationship. When he confronts Peter, the latter explains that they were only smoking marijuana and confiding in each other. He chastises David for failing to notice his daughter was depressed. Vick tells him that an ex-convict named Randy Cartoff confessed to raping and killing Margot before committing suicide.

An empty-casket funeral is arranged for Margot. As David is uploading photos to a funeral streaming site he notices that the website's stock photograph features the same woman as fish_n_chips’s profile picture. He contacts the woman and discovers that she is a stock model who does not know Margot and that the police never called her. Attempting to report this to Vick, he instead reaches a dispatcher who reveals that Vick volunteered to take the case and was not assigned to it as she had claimed. David googles Vick and finds that she knew Cartoff through a volunteer program for ex-convicts. He reports this to the sheriff and Vick is arrested.

Vick agrees to confess in exchange for leniency for her son Robert, who was using the alias fish_n_chips to get close to Margot because he had a crush on her. Margot sent Robert the money thinking he was a working-class girl whose mother was in the hospital. Robert felt guilty and wanted to give the money back. When he surprised Margot by getting into her car while she was smoking, she ran, and in the scuffle, Robert accidentally pushed her off a cliff into a 50-foot-deep ravine. Vick decided to cover up the incident, pushing the car into the lake and creating fake ID scenario. She then turned Cartoff into a fall guy and killed him.

David asks Vick where Margot's body is, and she tells him that even if Margot had survived the fall, she could not have lived five days without water. David tells the police to turn around, pointing out that a storm had occurred on the third day of the search and would have provided Margot with water. Sure enough, the rescue crew discovers Margot severely injured but alive.

Two years later, Margot has applied for college to major in piano. David tells her that Pamela would have been proud of her.

• John Cho as David Kim, Margot's father
• Debra Messing as Detective Sergeant Rosemary Vick
• Michelle La as Margot Kim, the daughter of David and Pamela
  • Kya Dawn Lau as 9-year-old Margot Kim
  • Megan Liu as 7-year-old Margot Kim
  • Alex Jayne Go as 5-year-old Margot Kim
• Sara Sohn as Pamela Nam Kim, David's wife
• Joseph Lee as Peter Kim, David's brother and Margot’s uncle
• Steven Michael Eich as Robert Vick, Rosemary's son
• Ric Sarabia as Randy Cartoff, ex-convict
• Sean O'Bryan as Radio Jockey
• Colin Woodell as 911 Operator

The original conception was an 8-minute short film. When Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian pitched the concept to The Bazelevs Company, the latter suggested it could be expanded into a feature film. While Ohanian was open to the offer and saw its potential, Chaganty was hesitant since he believed a feature film would be stretching the concept and feel too gimmicky. But after coming up with the intro, they felt the film would work.[6] The character, Rosemary Vick, was named after Rosemary's Baby and The Shield's character Vic Mackey.[7] Actor John Cho turned down the role of David Kim at first because he felt that the concept of a movie seen entirely through TV, phone and computer screens was not feasible.[8]

The film was shot on various devices. These include GoPro, drone (unmanned aerial vehicle), news helicopters, mini dv cameras, webcam, and even director Aneesh Chaganty's iPhone, which became the main camera.[6] The scenes between Cho's David Kim and Debra Messing's Rosemary Vick were all shot in one house, with Cho on one side of the house and Messing at the other.[8] Actress Michelle La described the filming process as a "logistical nightmare".[8]

The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2018.[9] Shortly after, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired distribution rights to the film for $5 million.[10] It was initially scheduled to be released on August 3, 2018, but was pushed back to a limited release on August 24, 2018, before opening wide on August 31, 2018.[11][12]

On August 14, 2019, a sequel was announced to be in development. Chaganty clarified that the story will not "follow the same characters or plot line as the original."[26] On January 13, 2021, it was announced that Will Merrick and Nick Johnson would create the sequel in their directing debut as well as co-writing the screenplay based on a treatment by Chiganty and Ohanian.[27]

• 2018: Alfred P. Sloan Prize at 2018 Sundance Film Festival[28]
• 2018: NEXT Audience Award at 2018 Sundance Film Festival[29]
• 2018: Sundance Institute / Amazon Studios Narrative Producer Award to producer Sev Ohanian at 2018 Sundance Film Festival[30]
• 2019: Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead nomination (John Cho)[31]

• Official website
• Searching at IMDb
• Searching at AllMovie
• Searching at Metacritic
• Searching at Rotten Tomatoes