In 2018, director Aneesh Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian turned in a nifty little thriller, “Searching,” that commented on the way we live now, which is to say, online. In it, John Cho searches for his missing daughter through her digital detritus, parsing clues that lie in plain sight. The entirety of the film took place on a computer screen, making use of the way that cameras have permeated our everyday existence, from FaceTime to surveillance video.
“Searching” was a critical and commercial success, and a sequel, “Missing,” is hitting theaters with a story by Chaganty and Ohanian, directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick, who wrote the screenplay as well. This time, the parent goes missing, as a daughter searches for her mother, turning up a whole host of new terrors and triumphs of tech and true crime.
Johnson and Merrick utilize the format set by “Searching,” but the technological, cultural and media landscape has evolved, including the fire hose of streaming true crime content — the only time the camera is ever liberated from the laptop screen is during fake-out recreations from a Netflix true crime series called “Unfiction." There's also the proliferation of TikTok detectives and Twitter police performing armchair analysis on every missing person case.
