‘Searching’ Is The First “Computer Screen Movie” Where The Internet Isn’t The Villain
By Sarah Foulkes/Aug. 31, 2018 11:00 am EST
Most teenagers would rather die than submit to their dad going through their entire laptop, contacting all of their friends and watching their private videos. But Margot Kim isn’t most teenagers. In Searching, David (John Cho) plays a recent widower whose daughter goes missing overnight. Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) volunteers to take on the case, but David can’t remove himself for the investigation, so he starts his own inquiry on his laptop and eventually logs into his daughter’s computer.But as the film proves, the computer is only as smart as the person who uses it – you have to know what to type in the search bar. In that way, modern technology is neither a force for good nor evil. It’s a tool.Spoilers for Searching begin here.
Screenlife
Weigh out all the pros and cons of modern technology all you want, but you can’t argue with how much it’s affected every single aspect of our lives. Cinema has tried to capture that in varying degrees of success. It was only a matter of time until technology became the lens.That’s when Hollywood director Timur Bekmambetov shows up. He’s the creator of a genre he calls “Screenlife,” films that take place entirely on computer screens. So far, mostly thrillers and horror films have had the screenlife treatment, but if Bekmambetov has his way, it won’t be long before “desktop dramas” emerge from the fringes to become a mainstream genre. All you need is a laptop and the Screenlife software that Bekmambetov developed. It eliminates a lot of the time-consuming traditional techniques that happen when filmmakers depict people using technology. Instead of doing a ‘shot/reverse shot’ and showing a screen and cutting to an actor’s reaction, Screenlife compresses the two into one frame. You can see action and reaction simultaneously.Searching opens with the creation of two accounts on Windows PC: Pamela and David Kim. It’s the beginning of a montage that echoes the heart-wrenching montage of Up (which also happens to function as a barometer of whether someone has the capacity for emotion or not). We are shown a compilation of iPhone videos, calendar events and appointments that illustrate Margot’s upbringing and Pamela’s illness. It’s a clever technique, but it hinges on how each audience member responds to the sentimentality. Because the montage is created for our eyes only, it lacks the spontaneity of many of the other scenes in the thriller. It’s clever exposition, but still feels a bit forced.A more poignant moment is when David logs back into the now deceased Pamela’s account and a Norton Antivirus notification pops up saying that it’s not been renewed in ‘694 days’. It’s a cobweb in a bygone room. Is it frightening or comforting that our devices can outlive us?Despite the formal invention, the film’s perspective jumps around too much to feel like a true Screenlife film. With the montage at the beginning and the cuts to hidden cameras and TV coverage in real-time, the confinement to a computer screen feels unnecessary. Because we are not sharing a perspective with anyone unlike in the rest of the film, they end up feeling disembodied. Eventually, the dedication to the form sometimes feels like a gimmick.
Digital Milk Carton
And yet, what the film does do well is capture the way that the internet engages with crime cases gone viral. #FindMargot starts trending on Twitter, and the sinister cynics start their own hashtag: #DadDidIt. It reveals the hypocrites that post and vlog about their ‘best friend’ Margot, and of course the assholes who make light of her disappearance. And despite the harrowing premise, the film does find a great deal of humour by way of David’s general ignorance of internet culture (“What’s a tumbler?” he asks Margot’s classmate at one point).The bulk of the film is essentially David getting to know his daughter without actually spending anytime with her. He finds out that she hasn’t been taking piano classes for the past six months even though he’s continued to give her $100 money every week to cover the cost. He learns that Margot is much better at making him believe that she has friends than at actually making them. Yet despite these revelations, the film does not support the claim that internet self and the off-internet self are radically different. His instincts about his daughter are right.
‘Searching’ Is The First “Computer Screen Movie” Where The Internet Isn’t The Villain
By Sarah Foulkes/Aug. 31, 2018 11:00 am EST
Most teenagers would rather die than submit to their dad going through their entire laptop, contacting all of their friends and watching their private videos. But Margot Kim isn’t most teenagers. In Searching, David (John Cho) plays a recent widower whose daughter goes missing overnight. Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) volunteers to take on the case, but David can’t remove himself for the investigation, so he starts his own inquiry on his laptop and eventually logs into his daughter’s computer.But as the film proves, the computer is only as smart as the person who uses it – you have to know what to type in the search bar. In that way, modern technology is neither a force for good nor evil. It’s a tool.Spoilers for Searching begin here.
Screenlife
Weigh out all the pros and cons of modern technology all you want, but you can’t argue with how much it’s affected every single aspect of our lives. Cinema has tried to capture that in varying degrees of success. It was only a matter of time until technology became the lens.That’s when Hollywood director Timur Bekmambetov shows up. He’s the creator of a genre he calls “Screenlife,” films that take place entirely on computer screens. So far, mostly thrillers and horror films have had the screenlife treatment, but if Bekmambetov has his way, it won’t be long before “desktop dramas” emerge from the fringes to become a mainstream genre. All you need is a laptop and the Screenlife software that Bekmambetov developed. It eliminates a lot of the time-consuming traditional techniques that happen when filmmakers depict people using technology. Instead of doing a ‘shot/reverse shot’ and showing a screen and cutting to an actor’s reaction, Screenlife compresses the two into one frame. You can see action and reaction simultaneously.Searching opens with the creation of two accounts on Windows PC: Pamela and David Kim. It’s the beginning of a montage that echoes the heart-wrenching montage of Up (which also happens to function as a barometer of whether someone has the capacity for emotion or not). We are shown a compilation of iPhone videos, calendar events and appointments that illustrate Margot’s upbringing and Pamela’s illness. It’s a clever technique, but it hinges on how each audience member responds to the sentimentality. Because the montage is created for our eyes only, it lacks the spontaneity of many of the other scenes in the thriller. It’s clever exposition, but still feels a bit forced.A more poignant moment is when David logs back into the now deceased Pamela’s account and a Norton Antivirus notification pops up saying that it’s not been renewed in ‘694 days’. It’s a cobweb in a bygone room. Is it frightening or comforting that our devices can outlive us?Despite the formal invention, the film’s perspective jumps around too much to feel like a true Screenlife film. With the montage at the beginning and the cuts to hidden cameras and TV coverage in real-time, the confinement to a computer screen feels unnecessary. Because we are not sharing a perspective with anyone unlike in the rest of the film, they end up feeling disembodied. Eventually, the dedication to the form sometimes feels like a gimmick.
Digital Milk Carton
And yet, what the film does do well is capture the way that the internet engages with crime cases gone viral. #FindMargot starts trending on Twitter, and the sinister cynics start their own hashtag: #DadDidIt. It reveals the hypocrites that post and vlog about their ‘best friend’ Margot, and of course the assholes who make light of her disappearance. And despite the harrowing premise, the film does find a great deal of humour by way of David’s general ignorance of internet culture (“What’s a tumbler?” he asks Margot’s classmate at one point).The bulk of the film is essentially David getting to know his daughter without actually spending anytime with her. He finds out that she hasn’t been taking piano classes for the past six months even though he’s continued to give her $100 money every week to cover the cost. He learns that Margot is much better at making him believe that she has friends than at actually making them. Yet despite these revelations, the film does not support the claim that internet self and the off-internet self are radically different. His instincts about his daughter are right.
