History Film / Searching

* DoesntKnowTheirOwnChild: David realizes how estranged he and Margot have as doesn't know anything about her after she goes missing.

* DoesntKnowTheirOwnChild: David realizes how estranged he and Msrgot have as doesn't know anything about her after she goes missing.

* DirtyCop: [[spoiler:Subverted in that Detective Vick is for the most part a model officer whose service has earned her numerous commendations throughout her career. However, she's wildly overprotective of her son, Robert, to the point that she not only covers up his assault on Margot but goes out of her way to ensure the search parties never get near the actual location where the altercation occurred and forces a prisoner to confess to Margot's murder to ensure she can't be found alive and expose the true culprit.]]

* HiredToHuntYourself: [[spoiler:Detective Vick specifically volunteered for the case to hide her own involvement in it.]]

* EmbarrassingHobby: David has a hard time getting bad-boy Derek to come forward with his alibi for the night in question. When pressed further, Derek reveals that he went to a Music/JustinBieber concert.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: David's brother Peter, who's a pothead [[spoiler:and shares weed with his teenage niece behind her father's back. But he does so to help her deal with the pain of her mother's death, and to help her open up about her feelings. She's clearly more comfortable talking to him about her feelings and choices than her father, and whether or not his actions were well-advised, they were clearly drive by genuine concern.]]

** User fish_n_chips on [=YouCast=], who frequently texts with Margot and share many personal info with her. At first, she seems to be uninvolved in the case, [[spoiler:until David finds out that the girl who appears in the advertisement for the [=MemorialOne=] website is the same person as the girl in fish_n_chips' profile picture. Then it turns out the girl who appears in both pictures is actually a stock photo model edited from the internet. The girl herself actually has nothing to do with it. But the account itself belongs to Detective Vick's son Robert, who makes the fake account to try to get close with Margot because he likes her.]]

** One of the reformed criminals Vick enlisted to be a volunteered construction worker that appeared in the photo that David looks up to see if Vick is trustworthy, [[spoiler:who turns out to be the same person as the supposed murderer of Margot. This leads David to suspect that Vick is up to no good.]]

** [[spoiler:In the end, we see a list of users of laptop chat application Margo uses two years after the incident. One of the users is the film's producer Timur Bekmambetov, and other producers who are involved.]]

* EatingLunchAlone: Margot, who was revealed to be lonely and kept distance from her friends, ate lunch alone in the cafeteria everyday, proven with photo evidence.

* FathersQuest: This movie chronicle's a determined father's quest to find his missing teen daughter through technology such as social media.

* HappierHomeMovie: During his harddrive search, David comes across a video of young Margot and her mother cooking. He is touched but then hides the clip from future search results.

** Peter's favorite hockey team, the San Jose Fins, is a stand-in for the real life [[UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague San Jose Sharks NHL]] team.

* ParentsAsPeople: A big part of the movie. David is a loving father, but when his wife Pamela dies, he's so consumed with his own grief, he is unable to help Margot deal with her own grief, and they become distant. All of which hinders the search for Margot throughout the movie because David knows so little about her and has to get information about her from second-hand sources, a couple of whom turn out to be {{unreliable|Expositor}}.
* PoliceAreUseless: Zigzagged. When David reports Margot's disappearance to the authority, he finds that the state he's in, California, has a statistic of resolved missing person cases below 50%, implying that the police forces there are ineffective in finding missing people. When Vick, a seemingly very dedicated detective is assigned to the case, David is a bit more reassured. As the case goes on, however, only David's personal investigation manages to make any progress on finding Margot and what happened to her, while Vick just gives him some clues here and there. [[spoiler:There is a reason for the uselessness: [[DetectiveMole Vick was behind the whole thing]]. She had been leaving fake trails for David to chase and orchestrated the entire case in such a way that no one will know what actually happened to Margot. When David finds out, he calls a squad of police to arrest her then later assist him in rescuing Margot once her location is found.]]

** [[spoiler:David's brother Peter, whom David finds his disturbing messages with Margot and mistake him for being a pedophile preying on her. He had nothing to do with her disappearance, he's just sharing weed with her to offer her a way to ease her mind off her own personal issues.]]

** In the second watching, [[spoiler:a lot of things Vick does actually foreshadows her actual role as the mastermind behind the plot. She seems very eager, almost too eager even, in trying to solve Margot's case, in California where the rate of resolved missing people cases is below 50%. When David calls her in the middle of the night to inform her that he follows Margot's trail to the lake, Vick immediately goes to the location not even changing her clothes and telling her son Robert that she'll take care of everything. Also, after David assaults Derek at the theater, she orders David to stay put and not participating in the investigation further. In the first case, she immediately goes to the lake because she's afraid that David will find out what her son did to Margot, and in the second case, she cuts David loose after realizing that David will stop at nothing to find out what happened to his daughter and he could find out the truth.]]
* RightForTheWrongReasons: [[spoiler:David finds some suspicious messages between Margot and Peter and assumes that they did something terrible behind his back. He was correct, but for the wrong reason. David initially assumes that Peter was grooming Margot into an incestuous relationship, but in reality, Peter was just sharing his weed with her and was not responsible for her disappearance.]]

* FakeRealTurn: [[spoiler:Detective Vick, upon learning her son was swindling his neighbors for donations to a fake charity, rather than reveal that it was fake, instead founded the charity herself to avoid Robert's reputation being ruined.]]

* IronicJuxtaposition: The shot of Margot frantically calling David multiple times in the middle of the night while his desktop's colorfully relaxing screensaver dances in the background.

* SocialMediaIsBad: Played with. The bad side of social media is shown -- Margot's schoolmates post about her disappearance for sympathy points although none of them were close to her, and a video of David attacking one of her schoolmates goes viral to his detriment. However, it's only through social media that David is able to make any headway in his search at all.

* WhamShot: To the public, the case is resolved, if tragically... and then David notices that [[spoiler:Margot's friend on [=YouCast=], whom Vick had told him was legit and had an alibi, has the same face as a stock photo model, meaning Vick had been lying about that...and possibly everything else.]]

* BecomingTheBoast: [[spoiler:Detective Vick, upon learning her son was swindling his neighbors for donations to a fake charity, rather than reveal that it was fake, instead founded the charity herself to avoid Robert's reputation being ruined.]]

** Early on, David tries to text Margot that her mother would have been proud of her for trying to achieve her goal, but he deletes it, as he is afraid to talk about the matter of his wife's death. [[spoiler:David follows through on telling her at the very end after they are reunited that her mother would be proud of her now.]]
* CannotSpitItOut: A non-romantic version. Throughout the film, it is shown that David is unable to have an honest talk with Margot about [[TheLostLenore Pamela]], since the trauma of her recent death is still too painful for him. Whenever he tries to broach the subject, he retreats, leaves things unsaid or [[ChangeTheUncomfortableSubject changes the subject]]. [[spoiler:This leaves Margot unable to process her own grief, which causes her to abandon her piano classes (pianos remind her of her mother), confide in her uncle Peter instead and start smoking weed as a coping mechanism against the pain. Peter eventually [[WhatTheHellHero calls out David for being so caught up in his grief that he neglected his daughter's well-being]]. David [[CharacterDevelopment gets over it]] by the time of the epilogue, finally being able to tell Margot that her mother would be proud of her.]]
* ChekhovsGun: The rainstorm that puts a stop to the second day of the search for Margot [[spoiler:ends up saving her life. She would have died of dehydration at the bottom of the cliff otherwise, but the rainstorm gave her enough water to stave off the dehydration until her father and a rescue team could find her.]]

* DissonantSerenity: The shot of Margot frantically calling David multiple times in the middle of the night while his desktop's colorfully relaxing screensaver dances in the background.

** Margot states her favorite Pokémon is Uxie, which lives in a lake. [[spoiler:Now, where was Margot found again? A lake.]]

* VillainousMotherSonDuo: [[spoiler:Downplayed by Vick and Robert. While they weren't initially working together, Robert stalked Margot and - they both thought - killed her, while Vick botched the investigation and framed and possibly killed an ex-con to protect him. However, Vick is shown to feel extremely guilty for her crimes and to feel TrappedInVillainy and if she's to be believed, Robert does too.]]

* UnreliableNarrator: [[spoiler:Vick testifies that her son insisted that he was going to try to owe up to fooling Margot, but considering Vick's overzealousness to protect her son from consequences and way of excusing that he fought against Margot, it's likely there was more to the story that she'd be very willing to overlook or leave out.]]

* NewMediaAreEvil: Zig-zagged. While the dark side of the Internet is present, David's access to his daughter's social media allows him to make far more headway searching for her than he might otherwise. Other modern technology also plays a part in his search.

* NotMeThisTime: [[spoiler:Randy Cartoff is a convicted felon, but he had nothing to do with Margot's disappearance.]]

* NoSympathy:
** When David asks Margot's classmate, Abigail, if she saw anything suspicious, he's told that Abigail had only invited Margot to the study group session so that Abigail can get into Berkeley. [[spoiler: When Margot is reported missing and assumed dead, Abigail and some other classmates [[OpportunisticBastard post their feigned sympathies online by pretending they had a life-long friendship with Margot]]. This utterly disgusts David, and the people are portrayed by the film as something akin to [[VileVulture vultures enveloping their food and taking what they can while it's fresh]].]]
** [[spoiler: Derek, on the other hand, cyberbullies Margot and leaves hateful comments about her while she's missing.]]

* IWillFindYou: David will stop at nothing to find his missing daughter.