'Search' hides an obvious alien invasion story
"Search" is much more than it appears on the surface.

The Search gives audiences a new perspective on crime and suspense thrillers by telling stories entirely through the screen. The recently released spiritual sequel Missing also exploits this on-screen life technique, which was popularized by producer Timur Bekmambetov with the film Unfriended. In both films, however, a more sinister subplot can be found in the background of each screen. In Finding, the main story centers on John Cho's David Kim, desperate to find his missing daughter. He scoured numerous news articles, police footage and Google searches. Amid all these digital sources and documents, an alien invasion subplot can be pieced together.
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What's the Alien Subplot in 'Searching'
There are many clues throughout the film that point to this subplot. In a YouTube video posted alongside various other videos of David King's daughter Margot (Michelle La), a different thumbnail can be seen. It read: "Real footage of aliens seen at Sequoia," and the thumbnail showed a strange silhouette projected on some trees. Elsewhere, a news article was headlined, "NASA releases study on approaching 'electromagnetic abnormal. ’” This anomaly seemed to be witnessed by so many people that it made headlines more than the surprise news about M. Night Shyamalan’s movie cameo. But these sightings were not just anomalies. There were actually some serious stakes at stake
As more and more news headlines point to NASA being green-lighted to participate in the investigation, some of the organization's more outspoken employees are being killed. Whether it's part of a government plan to cover up these alien sightings, or the aliens actually The fact that it's revenge against those who wished to seek their presence, the fallout from this alien plot points to a more sinister plot at work here. The scale of this plot even reaches the White House, where the President may weigh the alien threat.

'Missing' Continues the Alien Story
While this subplot wasn't fully resolved by the end of the search, Missing 2023 did build on it. Talking to Collider's Perri Nemiroff, one of Missing Will Merrick's directors revealed two films Here's how the writers behind it talked to each other about this alien subplot: The storyline hidden in the background is a clever way of incorporating Easter eggs into the movie - a mystery within a mystery. The Cloverfield franchise capitalized on this audience engagement as well. Through fake websites, movie posters and alternate reality games, Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox connect the world of fictional monsters with ours through a series of clever marketing campaigns. fused with the real world. Eager Cloverfield fans would then fill in the blanks about how the Cloverfield aliens existed.
“...so Searching is about a father searching for his missing daughter. In the background of that movie, on the sides of the screen with the comments and the news articles and the tweets, there are events happening, and that event is an alien invasion…. So if you guys ever get a chance to re-watch this movie [Missing], which you will on January 20th in theaters everywhere, watch closely because you might find out what happened with those aliens. I'll just say that.”
It would be fun to watch the full alien invasion movie via screenlife media. But who knows? Perhaps the minds behind Searching and Missing are already working on one. At the same time, viewers can look for more clues by watching "Missing", which is currently in theaters.