Searching (2018)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Searching |
| Original title | Searching |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 10 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Aneesh Chaganty |
| script | Aneesh Chaganty Sev Ohanian |
| production |
Timur Nuruachitowitsch Bekmambetow Sev Ohanian Natalie Qasabian Adam Sidman |
| music | Torin Borrowdale |
| camera | Juan Sebastian Baron |
| cut |
Nicholas D. Johnson Will Merrick |
| occupation | |
| |
Searching is a Mystery - Thriller - desktop film by Aneesh Chaganty from the year 2018. The entire plot of the film is shown on screens.
action
David Kim compiles videos and photos on his computer with memories of his wife Pam and daughter Margot. Pam died of lymph node cancer . The single father now mainly communicates online via Facetime and Chat with his teenage daughter, who enjoys playing the piano. One Thursday evening he chats with Margot again, who says she is in a study group at Evercreek High School, and also with his brother Peter. During the night Margot tries three times in vain to contact her father. The next morning he sees the missed calls, but does not reach Margot, who does not answer for the next few hours either. David also discovers that his daughter left her laptop at home. In the afternoon he calls the piano teacher, but she says that Margot has not come to class for six months. Peter says Margot could have run away.
To find out about Margot's friends, David looks up their social media profiles. But the accounts on Facebook , Instagram and Twitter are set to private. In Pam's contact list, David finds Isaac Blankensmith, who is said to have been Margot's best friend. Whose mother says that her son is camping in the mountains and invited Margot. But a little later, Isaac himself reports that Margot did not show up for the meeting. David then reports his daughter to the police as missing. Detective Rosemary Vick takes the case. While talking to David, he finds out online that the policewoman has received an award and has set up a rehab clinic with ex-convicts.
The next day, David manages to open his daughter's Facebook account. He creates a table with Margot's friends and contacts them one by one to find clues. But none of the 94 Facebook friends have any helpful information, and the police investigations also yield nothing. Abigail Nielsen turns out to be the host of the study group. She says that Margot left at 9:00 p.m. that evening and points out Margot's blog on Tumblr . Vick shows video footage from a surveillance camera. According to this, Margot drove alone on a highway out of town around 10 p.m. the evening of her disappearance . David looks at his daughter's checking account and finds that she has regularly paid in the $ 100 for piano lessons and six days ago transferred $ 2500 to a Venmo account that has since been deleted . On her Instagram account, he discovers a Derek Ellis who gives a concert as an alibi. Vick sends him a copy of a driver's license with the name Rachel Jeun on it but Margot's photo. Margot picked up this driver's license from a forger. She withdrew the $ 2500 herself and there is a suspicion of money laundering . But David doesn't believe that his daughter ran away.
He discovers her account on the YouCast video platform. A person with the pseudonym fish_n_chips appears in Margot's streams, who introduces herself as a waitress named Hannah and reports about her mother, who is also suffering from cancer. But according to Vick, Hannah was on night shift on Thursday. In the evening, the policewoman tells David how her son Robert once illegally raised money for an alleged charity and she protected him. After that David noticed Margot's pictures of a lake called Barbosa Lake. The lake is exactly in the direction Margot was last traveling, and David drives there in the middle of the night and finds her Pokémon keychain.
In the morning, the police pull Margot's car out of the water. She discovered traces of blood on the seat and the $ 2500. Search parties unsuccessfully scour the impassable terrain around the lake. The story and related rumors are spreading quickly on the internet. This also leads to a violent confrontation between David and Derek, whereupon Vick regards the father as a security risk and prohibits him from further investigations. Memorial One sends an email offer for a live stream of the funeral.
On a police photo of Margot's car, David discovers a sweater with the logo of Peter's favorite team, Fins. In old chats he sees that Margot has secretly met her uncle several times. He then installs surveillance cameras in his apartment. When David confronts his brother about the chat messages, he admits that he was using marijuana with Margot . Peter also tells him that Margot hated piano lessons because of the memory of his mother and accuses him of not talking to her.
When David overhears a message from Detective Vick, he learns that his daughter has been pronounced dead. Like the television reports, one is LiveLeak -Video surfaced of criminal Randy Cartoff in which the man confesses to the murder of Margot. He then shot himself and the police say they found his DNA on the lake. Vick tries to calm David down in the chat. He compiles videos for Memorial One and sees a photo of a woman on the service's website who is identical to the profile picture of the Youcast account of the alleged Hannah. He finds out that a Hannah Pardy is working as a model, but she knows nothing about Margot and Youcast. Another policewoman tells David that Vick volunteered to take on the case. In the photo with the convicts, he notices Cartoff next to Vick. Thanks to this information, Vick is arrested at the church vigil.
While in custody , she reports that her son called her that Thursday evening. He said he pushed a girl into a deep gorge on Barbosa Lake. Robert discovered Margot, whom he has known since school, six months ago at Youcast and contacted her with the account fish_n_chips. Margot transferred the $ 2500 for cancer treatment from "Hannah's" mother, but Robert then confessed to the fraud and wanted to give the money back at the lake. However, there was a physical argument in which Robert pushed the girl over the cliff. She then took over the investigation to protect him and also manipulated Cartoff's confession.
David remarks that Margot only had to go without water for two, not five days, because shortly after her disappearance there was a storm with a lot of rain. A rescue team finds the girl and pulls her out of the gorge alive.
Margot makes up with her father and applies to study piano at the Conservatory of Music.
synchronization
The German dubbed version was created by Berliner Synchron GmbH. Nana Spier wrote the dialogue book for it.
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| David Kim | John Cho | Alexander Doering |
| Margot Kim | Michelle La | Lina Rabea Mohr |
| Rosemary Vick | Debra Messing | Ranja Bonalana |
| Pamela Kim | Sara's son | Manja Doering |
| Peter Kim | Joseph Lee | Julien Haggège |
| Isaac Blankensmith | Connor McRaith | Philipp Lind |
| Abigail Nielsen | Briana McLean | Ronja Peters |
| Derek Ellis | Reed Buck | Moritz Lehmann |
| Randy Cartoff | Rick Sarabia | Bernd Egger |
| Hannah | Erica Jenkins | Olivia Büschken |
| SVPD Homicide Agent | Benjamin J. Cain Jr. | Christoph Banks |
Representation
The entire plot of the film is shown indirectly via screens. This includes a computer monitor, smartphones, security cameras, and television reports. Information is exchanged via telephone calls, messengers and Facetime . A similar representation was previously seen in the 2014 film Unknown User, also produced by Bekmambetow .
production
Director Aneesh Chaganty initially wanted to make an eight-minute short film with Sev Ohanian before Bekmambetow convinced her to make a bigger film. Filming lasted 13 days. Modern technology was used to film all scenes individually without any interaction between the actors. Bekmambetow developed software called Screenlife for his films. More technology was used for searching . It was filmed with iPhones and drones , among other things .
The entire production took two years. The realistic presentation of the software, websites and videos was also complex. The film shows programs such as Windows and Facebook that have been authentically recreated, as well as logos of well-known TV channels such as CNN . For the German and other language versions, all visible texts have been translated into the respective language.
publication
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2018. The film was released in German cinemas on September 20, 2018.
reception
Hanns-Georg Rodek writes in his review on Welt online that the film is inventing “a new genre”. It is "a one-child disappearing story, as we've seen many - but in a way we've never seen before." [...] What does not occur in the virtual world has not happened or at least is completely unimportant, our present urges us to believe this. Chaganty's extremely clever plot plays with it, first undermines it and in the end confirms it to a certain extent. "
In her review of kino.de, Teresa Otto also refers to the technology: “Polished to a high gloss and somehow also a hybrid between iPhone and desktop film, the image of society is to be presented to us in an all-encompassing way. [...] Shifting the narrative to the already familiar screens is more immersive and certainly more interactive than one is used to in the cinema. A clear vision and a good story should not be missing in this equation. "The new technology shows here" good approaches and a refreshingly good commentary on parent-child relationships in the digital world. "
Christoph Petersen writes at filmstarts.de that the concept with the screens “raises the subject to a completely different level, mainly because thanks to this staging trick we get closer than seldom to the characters and therefore still cheer for them when we happen to be Another twist of the story was crafted with a mallet. "
Sascha Westphal criticizes the film's plot at epd-film.de: “[Chaganty] did not take as much care in developing the plot as he did in drawing his characters. In the last third in particular, »Searching« develops into a clichéd crime thriller due to numerous hair-raising phrases that ultimately reveals more than just its credibility. "
At Rotten Tomatoes , Searching received a 92% approval rating from 239 ratings.
continuation
According to the magazine Deadline , a sequel to the film is planned. The content is supposed to be a new story, but it takes up the concept of showing the plot only on screens.
Web links
- Searching the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Searching in the online film database
- Official page for the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Searching . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 180288 / K).
- ↑ Age rating for searching . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ a b Searching (2018). German synchronous index, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e Timur Bekmambetov Is Done With Hollywood and Only Wants to Make Movies on Computer Screens. Indiewire , August 1, 2018, accessed August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ Trivia. IMDb, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ Trivia. IMDb, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ Trivia. IMDb, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ 2018 Sundance Film Festival: Feature Films Announced. Sundance Film Festival , November 29, 2017, accessed August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ This film will change cinema forever. Welt online, September 19, 2018, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ^ "Searching" review: Is this the future of cinema? kino.de, September 21, 2018, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ^ Searching. filmstarts.de, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ Critique of Searching. epd-film.de, August 24, 2018, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
- ^ Searching. Rotten Tomatoes, accessed August 17, 2019 .
- ↑ Sony's Stage 6 Films Plots Sequel To Sundance Sleeper 'Searching'. Deadline, August 14, 2019, accessed on August 17, 2019 .