‘Searching’ is a captivating thriller about getting lost in the sauce of the digital age (Originally published for Nightmarish Conjurings)

 

John Cho plays a father searching for clues on his daughter’s laptop in her disappearance in Searching (Sony Pictures)

Who knows the real you better— your parents, or your Instagram/Facebook/Twitter followers?

A captivating social thriller about familial relations and the underbellies of the Internet age, Aneesh Chaganty’s Sundance winner Searching tells the story of David Kim (helmed by an impressive and completely relatable performance by John Cho) and his sometimes-distant teenage daughter, Margot, who fails to return home after a night out at a study group. When a concerned David begins to panic and files a missing persons report, Detective Vick (played by a sometimes awkward Debra Messing) is assigned to the case, and suggests that David should hop on Margot’s laptop— in order to contact her possible friends and acquaintances, as well as to view her recent website browser visits, in order to gather possible evidence of her whereabouts. As the film’s tagline cleverly hints at, David will never be able to find his daughter until he understands who she truly was in the first place.

Sharp Objects gives us an abrupt, gut-punch of a series finale (Spoilers, Originally published by Nightmarish Conjurings)

Camille (Amy Adams) is haunted by many things in her past, including her dead sister Marian. (HBO)

From its visceral images of Southern gothic aesthetic, its kinetic use of blink-and-you-will-miss-it memory flashbacks, and its brilliant dramatic acting from the likes of Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, and Chris Messina, HBO’s murder mystery hit of the summer, Sharp Objects, came full circle Sunday night, as we (SPOILER ALERT) discovered that the murderer of Wind Gap’s two young girls has been none other than kid sister/teenage femme fatale, Amma (played by breakout star Eliza Scanlen).

For those who read Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name, this did not come as a surprise…and to be honest, this really should not have been a shock to those who went into the series completely cold, either.