Searching gave audiences a new take on a crime and suspense thriller by telling its story entirely through screens. The recently released spiritual sequel Missing also capitalizes on this screenlife technique, popularized by producer Timur Bekmambetov with the film Unfriended. However, across these two films, a more sinister subplot can be found in the background of each screen. In Searching, the primary story focuses on John Cho’s David Kim who is desperate to find his daughter who has gone missing. He searches through numerous news articles, police footage, and Google searches. In the midst of all these digital sources and documents, an alien invasion subplot can be pieced together.

What's the Alien Subplot in 'Searching'

John Cho as David Kim being interviewed in Searching
Image Via Sony Pictures Releasing

There are a number of clues throughout the film that point to this subplot. In a YouTube video posted alongside various other videos about David Kim’s daughter Margot (Michelle La), there can be seen a thumbnail that is unlike the rest. “REAL FOOTAGE of alien sighting at Sequoia” it reads, with the thumbnail displaying a weird silhouette cast across some trees. Elsewhere, a news article headline reads “NASA has issued an advisory for approaching ‘electro-magnetic anomaly.’” This anomaly seems to be witnessed by a large number of people, so much so it becomes the top trending headline, beating out news about a surprise M. Night Shyamalan film cameo. But these sightings are more than just anomalies. There are actually some serious stakes.

As more news headlines point to NASA’s involvement in investigating the green lights, some more outspoken employees of the organization are being killed off. Whether it's part of the government’s plan to cover up these alien sightings or the fact that the aliens are actually retaliating against those who wish to seek out their existence, the fallout of this alien conspiracy presents a more sinister plot at work here. The scale of this conspiracy even reaches the White House with the President potentially weighing in on the extraterrestrial threat.

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'Missing' Continues the Alien Story

Storm Reid as June and Megan Suri as Veena staring at a computer in Missing (2023)
Image via Sony 

Although this subplot doesn’t reach a full resolution by the end of Searching, 2023’s Missing does expand upon it. Speaking with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, one of the directors of Missing Sev Ohanian revealed how the writers behind both films talked to each other about this alien subplot:

“...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.”

The use of screenlife storytelling is already innovative in and of itself, but incorporating hidden storylines in the background is a clever way of incorporating easter eggs into a film—a mystery within a mystery. It’s the kind of audience engagement that the Cloverfield franchise also capitalized on. Across fake websites, movie posters, and an alternate reality game, Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and The Cloverfield Paradox blended the world of the fictional monster universe with our real world through a series of clever marketing campaigns. Eager Cloverfield fans would then fill in the blanks on how the Cloverfield aliens came to exist.

It would be interesting to see a full-on alien invasion movie told through the screenlife medium. But who knows? Maybe the minds behind Searching and Missing are already working on one. In the meantime, audiences can look for some more clues by watching Missing, which is now in theaters.