Searching: Did You Catch These Hints Throughout the Twisty Thriller?
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Warning: This post contains spoilers for the movie Searching.
Starring the venerable John Cho and Debra Messing, Searching is one of the twistiest thrillers you'll ever come across. Just imagine a modern-day Hitchcock project that occurs entirely on a computer screen interface. In the film, David Kim, an anguished widowed father, launches a full-fledged internet investigation to figure out what happened to his missing 16-year-old daughter, Margot. While working on his own theories, he gets help from his brother Peter and Detective Rosemary Vick. But, of course, things are not as they seem.
Anyone who made it to the end of Searching will surely appreciate the twists, plants, and buildup that the filmmakers use to create suspense and a logical narrative. Still, even the shrewdest internet sleuths may overlook or glaze over some of the cleverly hidden clues in Searching that point to the shocking reveal of what happens to Margot. Just in case you missed them, we've rounded up the most important hints sprinkled throughout the movie.
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Fishy Things About Rosemary's Online Presence
- Early in the movie, David skims through Rosemary's Facebook page. The detective's cover photo features a seemingly harmless Agatha Christie quote about a mother doing everything that she can for her child. Well, it turns out Detective Vick would really do anything for her son — even cover up potential involuntary manslaughter.
- The fact that Rosemary seems like such a do-gooder should arouse suspicion in the avid thriller fan. (You don't need to look further than Adora in Sharp Objects or Rose in Get Out.) When David first searches the detective, he sees a bunch of articles about her accolades and community service projects. In one of the articles that he clicks on, the detective is posing with ex-cons for coverage of a police outreach project. The main person that she poses with is none other than the man who, in a live video, falsely confesses to killing Margot before taking his own life.
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Fishy Things That Rosemary Says and Does
- Rosemary tells David early on that parents may not really know their children, and it's not their fault if they don't. Once, she recalls, a neighbor angrily confronted her saying that her son Robert stole $25 from them. (Side note: Robert ends up taking $2,500 from Margot.) He creates a fake charity under her name to scam money from people. David asks her how she dealt with the situation. Rosemary replies that she pretended to play along with his scam, confirming that she did start a charity. Here, we get a sense of how she's willing to lie for her son. It's no surprise that she would go as far as help him cover up Margot's mysterious disappearance.
- David does some sleuthing on Margot's Tumblr and Instagram accounts, discovering that her favorite hangout spot is Barbosa Lake. He comes to realize that after taking off from the gas station the night she went missing, she dropped by the lake. Distraught, he calls up Rosemary, who asks him if he's going to the lake. Which, she shouldn't know because he hadn't told her anything about his findings at this point.
- At one point, Rosemary tells her son, "Sweetie, let me take care of this." Distraught, she tells David to butt out of the investigation because he's too close to it. Her son Robert lingers in the background with a nervous look on his face. It's possible that he's on the verge of spilling the beans about his own involvement in the situation. Additionally, Rosemary may be concerned that David might recognize her son as being one of Margot's classmates. Looking back, this seems too loaded a scene to dismiss.
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It's All in a Name
- In Pam's computer address book, we see an entry for Robbie Abolt under "Margot's classmates." Pam notes "has a crush on Margot." His last name differs from his mother's due to divorce, as confirmed by Sev Ohanion, the writer and producer of Searching.
- Robert's fake username on YouCast is "fish_n_chips," which points to the obvious theme of the movie, catfishing. (The mascot of Margot's school just happens to be the catfish, after all.) Robert pretends to be someone who he's not in order to form a relationship with Margot and extort money from her.
- Using the persona "fish_n_chips," Robert lets Margot know that his favorite Pokemon is Kecleon, which changes its body color to blend in with its surroundings — which is more or less catfishing in a nutshell.
- The lead detective's name is Rosemary Vick. In Rosemary's Baby, Rosemary gives birth to evil. Vick Mackey is a corrupt police officer in FX's The Shield. As we know, it's Rosemary's son who commits the crime itself, and the detective undoubtedly turns out to be pretty crooked in terms of how she handles her son's wrongs. Ohanian confirmed the significance of these two Easter eggs.