The plot of “Searching” is seemingly simple: a 16-year-old girl named Margot goes missing and her dad digs into her computer to look for clues so he can find her. What’s not simple is the way the story is told—through the screens of computers and phones. “It’s a very classic thriller told in a really unconventional way. The whole movie takes place on technology devices that we use every single day,” said Aneesh Chaganty, the film’s cowriter and director.
It was also supposed to be just eight minutes long.
Sev Ohanian, who produced and cowrote the film, said, “We had an opportunity with the production company that made the film ‘Unfriended.’ They were interested in us pitching them a short film that would take place on devices.”
Telling a story through screens wasn’t new to Aneesh. “The first thing I made that got me attention was a two-minute video on Google Glass and it got me my job at Google.”
For two years, Aneesh wrote, developed and directed commercials at Google. “Those commercials, their objective was to take technology, use it as a narrative device and make it feel very emotional… I learned from my bosses there that you don’t necessarily need to see someone’s face or show an establishing shot to make people feel. You can just show a search bar and make someone cry if you use the mouse in the right way.”
Producer Timur Bekmambetov (whom Sev affectionately calls “the godfather”), who founded Bazelevs Company, liked the idea of “Searching” so much that he decided it should be a full-length film. Aneesh said no.
Artistic merit
Aneesh said, “No first-time filmmaker in the history of filmmaking ever gets offered money and (is told) ‘Hey, here’s all the creative freedom and money, go and make a movie.’ But in the moment, it felt like what we would be doing was taking a concept that we were only being asked to make because another movie was a hit or because we could, as opposed to it actually having artistic merit. We watched a lot of these movies that took place on screens and they always felt like gimmicks. Nothing ever felt cinematic or emotional or engaging. For us, if we would ever do this movie, it needed to be all three of those things at the very least.”
Besides, he thought, “Who wants to make their first movie on a computer screen?”
Aneesh told Super, “When you tell someone you’re making a movie that takes place on screens, your reaction isn’t going to be, ’Oh my god, this is gonna be the best movie ever made.’ It’s like, ‘Huh? How is that going to be possible?’ One of the things I’m most proud of is that we had those exact same questions at every single point of making this movie. It was, how the hell is this going to be interesting? How is this going to be emotional? How is this going to be engaging? How is this going to be cinematic? There’s no way, there’s no way, there’s no way, there’s no way.”
But over a month later, Sev texted Aneesh. “‘I have an idea for an opening scene.”
And Aneesh texted back, “I have an idea for an opening scene.” They called each other and pitched each other the exact same scene.
Aneesh said, “It’s a very specific scene that shows how completely emotional and engaging and cinematic the movie can be and all of a sudden it felt like we had an opportunity to make a movie that nobody had seen before.”
Sev said, “Truthfully, we just wanted to make something that would feel like a good movie first rather than it being a good computer movie.”
Aneesh quit his job at Google, moved back to LA and started working on “Searching.”
Battle
Aneesh and Sev, writing partners who first met at University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, battled it out as they worked on the script.
Sev said, “Some people write together. We kinda write against each other… How would we figure out this plot twist?”
Aneesh said, “We fight it out…”
“…until whoever wins,” Sev continued. “Because ultimately we’re trying to make the story better so our ideas have to survive the other person’s attacks.”
Aneesh said, “There’s an ego that has to be removed. We have to listen to the argument that’s going to make it a better movie.”
“And some of the biggest battles we had probably resulted in some of the better parts of the movie,” said Sev.
Timur trusted their judgment, even when they started breaking the rules he wrote when he produced “Unfriended.” “He said, okay, make the movie, let’s see if your experiment works. He said his version of screen movies is old testament and ours is the new testament.”
They convinced John Cho to take the role of David Kim that they had written with him in mind. John said, “This is a thriller, this is why I signed on to do it. It was the script and the story first and foremost. I didn’t have the interest particularly in breaking new ground in cinema, which is what it ended up doing.”
(READ: John Cho finally gets the spotlight in “Searching”)
He added, “Eight minutes in, you forget that the movie is taking place on an iPhone or a laptop. The accomplishment of the movie is an admission that we are living our lives inside our devices.”
Through auditions, they completed the list of people (Michelle La, Sara Sohn, Joseph Lee) that would make up the rest of David’s Asian-American family. “Why Asian-American? The answer to that was why not? For both Sev and I, it was important that we made a movie that had nothing to do with any race issues or any identity issues. It was just about a family, this is what an American family looks like. I think to not address that is one of the coolest parts of the film,” Aneesh said.
John said, “This film looks at its Asian-American subjects and forgets it. And that is a remarkable thing. And I’m very proud of that. It’s one of the many reasons I’m proud of it.”
They cast Debra Messing as Detective Rosemary Vick.
Michelle La, who plays the missing girl Margot, said, “It’s not the traditional acting experience. But using devices we use every day helped me stay present. It was intuitive for me. It was a challenge but it was fun, it was different and it had never been done before.”
The film was shot in just 13 days but production took a year and a half because they wanted to make sure the internet experience shown onscreen felt authentic. Margot’s social media trail and digital footprint had to feel real. “Every single website they go to in the film, 99.9 of it is accurate and accurate to the date the movie takesplace in,” Aneesh said.
“What Aneesh and the team were doing after the principal photography was like a form of puppeteering,” said John.
They had to create everything from scratch—the desktops, the text messages, the websites, Facebook profiles, searches, comments, news clips and more. They even took into consideration the speed by which David’s cursor moves based on his emotions. “Searching” blended the worlds of live action and animation. And it was a painstaking process that paid off.
Aneesh said, “I call it pause-worthy. If you pause the movie and looked around the frame, everything has to make sense. It can’t be just a bunch of lorem ipsums, you know.”
The movie premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January.
Producer Natalie Qasabian described the feeling of going from the tiny edit room she, Sev and Aneesh shared with their two editors Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, to having their world premiere at Sundance: “Just that response that we got in the theater… let alone to have Sony come up and buy the movie literally 12 hours later, it’s been incredible.”
“Searching” won the Alfred Sloan Prize and the NEXT Audience Award at Sundance. Sev also won the Sundance Institute/Amazon Studios Narrative Producer Award at the festival.
Sev said, “We didn’t promote it at all. The best way to promote the movie is the movie itself. The movie is having its worldwide release thanks to Sony. We’re bringing it all over the world.”
“I hope people enjoy the ride,” said John.
Excitement
It is a ride. At the screening in Hong Kong, one of the attendees was Charles Lo, the creator of Upmood, a wearable device that uses your biodata to keep track of your heart rate, stress level, vitality levels and emotions. He said, “I was wearing the band yesterday while we were watching. I can show you my report. I started calm, then hyped because obviously I was really excited about the movie, and then sad, anxious. As the movie builds up, I felt excitement, a stream of excitement… This is a whole report of what exactly I felt during the whole movie.”
We weren’t wearing Upmood when we watched “Searching” but the proof that it is a totally twisty thriller is how it had us literally on the edge of our seat. It’s a suspense film. It made us cry too. “Searching” has so many layers to enjoy: the voyeuristic feeling of diving into other people’s devices, the heart-pounding mystery, the familiarity of the world David is navigating, the unexpected turns, the little clues you’re likely to miss the first time you watch and the questions it will make you ask yourself. Just how well do we know the people we are closest to?
Sev said, “I think that what surprises people the most about Searching is how emotional the movie is. Five minutes in, people are crying. If you’re looking at the trailers and posters and you’re like, wait, you’re telling us the whole movie? Trust us, it’s not even close.”
Although it has yet to open in other parts of the world (the Philippines included), “Searching” is already a hit—critics love it (it has a 92 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of press time), audiences are raving about it (and watching it more than once), they had to double the cinemas showing it after the first week in the United States, it’s become the number one movie in Korea and Indonesia and has made $34 million so far.
Another thriller
Aneesh and Sev are just getting started.
“The next movie we’re making takes place entirely on an Apple Watch,” Aneesh joked at the RISE Tech Conference in Hong Kong.
“It’s just a pedometer,” John said.
Aneesh and Sev are working on another thriller called “Run,” which will be about a mother and daughter. Aneesh said, “We like to describe what we tell as emotional and thrilling… So far, thrillers have been an easy execution of that but (our films) don’t have to involve blood or murder. The next one does involve blood but ultimately what we want to do is tell stories that are thrilling, gripping, bold, original but most of all, very very emotional.”
Sev added, “Dude, every time we write together, we go, ‘I got chills, I got chills.’ And we know that that’s a good idea. “Run” is going to be thrilling but it’s going to be darker than “Searching.” Really really dark. And no, it won’t take place on screens.”
“Searching,” distributed by Columbia Pictures, opens in Philippine cinemas on Sept. 19.
