The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 31, 2018, by Screen Gems.
It is the first mainstream Hollywood thriller headlined by an Asian-American actor. Set entirely on computer screens and smartphones, the film follows a father ( John Cho) trying to find his missing 16-year-old daughter (Michelle La) with the help of a police detective ( Debra Messing).
Searching is a 2018 American mystery thriller computer screen film directed by Aneesh Chaganty in his feature debut and written by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian.