We Don't Need Two Metaphors

The Social Network is a great film about the birth of social media but in the 8 years since that film’s release, there haven’t been too many great films about social media and our relationship with it. When not too busy gruesomely disposing of its characters, 2015’s Unfriended addressed bullying and the pervasive permanence of online activity from a viewpoint inside computer screens, the eyes of each character gazing down into the audience; it was a gimmick, but a well executed gimmick. Searching builds on that gimmick and develops into a film that brings to mind the unreliable storytelling of David Fincher’s Gone Girl and the teenage woes of Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen . Two years on from the death of his wife Pamela (Sara Sohn), David Kim (John Cho) is raising their daughter Margot (Michelle La) on his own. When Margot doesn’t return home one evening, David grows ever more worried and an investigation, led by detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) is launched