Movies

The Avocado Movie Club #50: Searching (2018)

Welcome to the Movie Club! Today’s movie is Aneesh Chagnaty’s screenlife mystery Searching!

There were a lot of different posters for this movie despite it’s budget, but Spain was the only country with this strange alternate version of the main poster.

As a screenlife film, Searching is told entirely through things like computer screens, cell phone screens and found footage. It stars John Cho as David Kim, whose relationship with his daughter, Margot, has grown more distant since the passing of his wife and her mother. After Margot goes missing one night, David begins to search for her on his own, slowly piecing together the mystery as he learns about her private life that she kept hidden.

Searching first premiered under the title of Search at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2018, before a limited release on August 24, 2018, with a wider release the following week on August 31, 2018, with international release dates staggered throughout the rest of the year.1 It was a box office success, earning $75.6 million against a small budget of only $880,000, and was also well recieved by critics, earning a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.23

Trivia:45 

  • There is apparently some sort of hidden alien invasion subplot running through the background of the movie. It has no bearing on the actual story and is just there for fun. 
  • The movie was shot in only 13 days but took over a year to finish editing.
  • Scenes that took place over Skype were shot with a GoPro attached to the top of a laptop screen.

Up Next: Our next movie will be Bill Watterson’s bizarre genre mash-up Dave Made A Maze! I will be on vacation for the next two weeks though, so I’m postponing that thread by a week, meaning our next thread will be posted on June 26, at 12PM EST. Check out the trailer and where it’s playing below: 

USA

  • Stream: Hoopla, Plex, Tubi, Kanopy, The Roku Channel
  • Rent or Buy: Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, Fandango At Home, Spectrum (Rental only)

Canada

  • Stream: Hoopla, Plex, Tubi
  • Rent or Buy: Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube

UK

  • Stream: Shudder (via Prime Video)
  • Rent or Buy: Google Play, YouTube, Rakuten TV, Sky Store (Purchase only)
  1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7668870/releaseinfo/ ↩︎
  2. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Searching-(2018) ↩︎
  3. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/searching_2018 ↩︎
  4. https://gizmodo.com/an-alien-invasion-was-happening-in-searching-you-just-1830338767
    ↩︎
  5. https://nofilmschool.com/2018/07/searching-sundance-aneesh-chaganty-interview ↩︎