Searching

"Watching a movie told entirely from the point-of-view of computer and smartphone screens creates an odd sensation. The opening image of director Aneesh Chaganty’s missing person thriller Searching (which plays at Sydney Film Festival and will be released nationally September 13) is an exterior shot of a bright, grassy green hill beneath a glossy blue sky. Anybody who has ever operated Microsoft Windows will probably recognise this as a generic desktop background image, but you wouldn't have seen it in this way: on a big screen at the cinema. Usually filmmakers try to avoid a stock-standard tableau; here it is the very point of the shot – to contextualise a shared visual frame of reference."

"So far the genre of movies set on computer screens is a shallow pool. Following on from Open Windows, Unfriended, and other curiosities, here’s one called Searching. It might sound like faint praise to say it’s the best of the form so far, but Searching works so well that its gimmick mostly disappears, and the style seems more like an inevitability of the way we live our lives online."

"Cutting to the emotional core of what social media says about us, the result is as much a time capsule of our relationship to (and reliance upon) modern technology as it is a cutting-edge digital thriller."

"See it, then go home and wipe your hard drive."

"Chaganty’s tab-toggling is pacy enough, but he gets pedantic about tying up unfinished digital business, and Unfriended’s pulse-raising wildness is beyond him."

"...one of the more interesting and technically impressive films of the year so far."

"Virtually the entire story is told via screens large and small and, with Chaganty's sharp direction, it's a brilliant way of creating both an intimate, voyeuristic feel and generating tension for the audience."

"The movie's arresting visual conceit has enough flexibility to sustain interest, even if the story's twists and turns sometimes feel excessively fiendish."

"There is a great little whodunit story buried within to keep us guessing, and the performances are perfectly pitched."

"Impressively, first-time filmmaker and former Google commercials creator Aneesh Chaganty has also made a real movie, the story of a family that morphs into a crime drama..."

"...speaks uncomfortable but necessary truths about the Internet age in a way that forces the audience to pay attention."

"The smart visual trickery lifts what might otherwise have been a fairly conventional thriller, but it also lets Chaganty say some interesting things about our online lives."