The director Aneesh Chaganty has managed to combine in "Searching", the best of the classic thrillers with an innovative technique and aesthetic, typical of modernity. The plot, in the background, doesn't differ from most missing people films: Margot, a 16 years old girl, disappears and her father David, first by himself and then with the help of the police, begins an investigation to find out her whereabouts. Even the use of the computer and social networks as a field of exploration to obtain clues about the last steps of a missing person has been worked in other films before. So what's new? The technique. The shape. And, above all, its handling.

The whole movie is told through screens (laptops, smartphones, TVs, cameras) and the director wanted to play with the viewers, immerse them into the story in a clever way: when facing a screen (in the cinema, or on a TV) seeing elements that are present in another familiar screens (that of their computer or laptop) the public becomes familiar with the elements, feels part of the plot, of the investigation, shares the anguish of the father, the police efforts, is a close witness, firsthand, of the development of events. And social networks, emails, the possibilities of these platforms, are worked with so much detail and so much expertise that they don't seem a fake trick. That is, they don't look like a "trick" at all but are inextricably linked to the plot and makes us understand that the film could not have been told in any other way; or without a doubt, it wouldn't have been the same.

In addition to the technique, another highlight of the film is the social background, what is worrisome is the exposure of people, especially teenagers, through social networks. The present situation in the film, in which a father thinks he knows his daughter, but discovers through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other less popular networks, that it's not like that and that also thoughts and emotions that haven't been told to him have been exposed to thousands of strangers in the network, is a situation that is present in many homes. Some may say that in that case the networks work as spaces to express repressed ideas and feelings, but the revelation of very personal information can be dangerous because we don't know who may be watching.

Seeing the movie, parents may think, are our children safe? Is he or she really who I think he/she is? When they see that they have thousands of followers/friends on social networks, they ask themselves, who are these friends? And finally, is it possible that something like this happens? And what terrifies them the most is the affirmation with which this last question is answered. I was positively surprised by the realization of this film, which, while it is still "entertainment cinema", manages to keep the audience absorbed, looking from one window to the other, trying to solve the mystery, during practically the whole film.

I award a 7.5 / 10 for a film in which the classic suspense (false clues, turn of events, enlightening revelations) is successfully combined with narrative innovation and manages to tell a story as old as the world, what would do a father for his child, using resources of current time and society. It's one of the best films that have come out in this 2018 and I highly recommend it.