"This is the craziest horror movie I've ever seen" (18+)
There are no words in the world to describe all the trash I just watched. I don't know if it's right to call it a horror movie. I believe that for this you need a separate genre, which is trash. Hence, I think it is clear that “Search” or in a more correct translation of “Finding” I did not like. I will try to make an objective assessment and draw the same conclusion.
Since this is considered a horror, we will judge by the criteria inherent in horror. The most important criterion is the atmosphere. Horror cannot exist without it. Its constituent criteria are story, acting and soundtrack. For the subgenre of a maniac and a murderer, such a criterion as the personality of a maniac is necessary. In other words, it must have its own characteristics.
Plot: Marty's diligent student has changed a lot. No one can understand the reason. If I say more, in one word I can tell you the whole storyline, which is the only one here. I also want to point out that the story is very primitive. During the entire viewing, it seems that Marty has kleptomania. Because he's doing things that aren't clear and why. While watching my face there was no emotion at all, I often yawned. The reason for this is that the story develops very slowly. We reveal some details that do not affect the plot in any way. It seems that we are being told about it just for the sake of time. No plot sharp turns, about the tick I will not say at all. The ending was just a little unexpected, or rather very unexpected. It was the only thing that attracted interest for at least a few minutes. And so the whole plot is a wind that nobody needs and will be forgotten the next day.
Acting: There was no emotion on the faces of the heroes except frown and sadness. Some emotions appeared only at the end. Even the smiles looked so fake and fake that they caused only more sadness and frown this time on the viewer's face. Heroes were not completely revealed, they were not personalities. In other words, they were empty. And this sub-criteria is the most important thing for me. There were attempts at the director to make some development in the course of the plot from the main character Marty, whose role was played by Gavin Brown. But even here it all looked somehow artificial and not gradually, but just suddenly, which is not realistic at all. Besides the main character, I have no one else to single out that his father, that his mother, whose names we will never know, were just as empty. In sum, this criterion is made as terrible as the previous one.
Maniac: The main maniac of the film was simply disgusting. His emotions, which were in the end, were at the level of first-year students of GITIS University. He was even worse than the maniac from "Bearing the Cross." I thought there was nowhere worse, and there was always room at the bottom. The murders committed by the maniac from that film were at least more or less clear, and partially justified. But the reasons why the maniac from "Search" killed are just so stupid and sucked out of a finger that when I recognized them, for the first time, emotions appeared on my face, or rather, eyes became "o" shapes. In summary, this criterion is also made terrible. I think the award "The most stupid maniac" should be awarded to the maniac from "Search".
Soundtrack: The director’s attempts to insert serious music into this film work, that is, not rock, were very ridiculous. This leads to the idea that Scott Schirmer wanted to make a suitable representative of the horror genre and subgenre of maniacs and murderers. As usual, in such trash inserted or rock, or psychedelic melodies. And here the musical accompaniment was not very bad, you can say even good. It's a pity that something didn't fit the subject.
Atmosphere and voiceover: Of course, after all the criteria were failed to expect some kind of atmosphere, it is not worth it. It's not there, it feels like you're listening to the story of some drunken man who decided to share his heartache with you. I tried to find something that could be emphasized in this atmosphere, but I didn't find it. Separate voiceover story. Even though you shout, even though you speak normally, even if you ask for something, the tone of the narrator does not change completely. If you know English, look for the English version. I would be happy to look for it, but I at least found the Russian version and looked to the end, and I do not have the strength to review all this, it is so terrible.
So Search or Find is one of the worst horror movies I've seen. I don't understand why the director released this. I also don’t understand why this film scored 5 in Russia and abroad. It seems that in 2012, the belittlement of the personality on racial, gender and so on in the West was already suppressed, and here the film was quietly released, in addition, was not met by the hat. It's really amazing. 5 for this very high score. I’m not denying that Search is a really hard movie. It can definitely affect the failed psyche, but the complete lack of plot, acting and so on is really frightening that such products are accepted so well in society. I don’t recommend it, especially if you’re under 18.
2 out of 10
Please let me spit on the translators! The difference between “search” and “find” (as the film’s title actually translates) is colossal and grand! And this film is not about the search process (it is not there at all), but about the end - a randomly found object that becomes a catalyst for the subsequent human explosion.
The strength of the film, in addition to a great acting, a well-written and well-thought-out script and excellent cinematography, lies in the absence of “the only right thing.” There is no division into black and white, good and evil. A killer maniac is bad; what if he kills to protect his beloved little brother and what the mother of the family promotes as family values? Hitting a peer (and in general fighting) is bad – and if it does an intelligent, sensitive and talented boy who has long been poisoned for exactly what he is? Parental care is good; but what happens when it’s pointlessly superficial, and it’s easier for parents to just shout for external decency than to figure it out and let them trust? The film poses a lot of questions and does not give answers, while not imposing anything - neither pseudo-morality nor high truths. Impeccable and honed in its cruelty bloody scenes, whether it’s a “film in the movie” or the ending, frame the movie as a precious frame and emphasize the sharpness of the question that asks twelve-year-old boy: “My life becomes like a horror movie, but who is the monster?”
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a novel that’s filmed, but I hope that’s yet to come. Regardless of the literary basis, the film itself is a true masterpiece, the horror of which is not a monster or a ghost, but what lives in the soul of every person and periodically goes for a walk.
10 out of 10
Any postcard idyll is not difficult to destroy: one has only to begin to doubt. However, in the life of a fifth-grader, Marty, doubts could not be in place, since he had long ceased to indulge in illusions, perfectly understanding their deceptive value. Diligence, conscientiousness, passion remained in the past, they were replaced by detachment, anger, hatred - for the truth about his own older brother was too terrible to leave gaping wounds somewhere deep in his soul. And Marty had to come to terms, although with every new day, with every new bruise and tumult from the ubiquitous school bull, it became more difficult, unbearable, nightmare.
Scott Schirmer’s “Search” draws attention primarily to the fact that in this psychological drama of youthful growing up there is practically no place for false sentiments, pretense and deliberate flattery: everything is like life, only perhaps with a little more mournful black. The film adaptation of Todd Rigney’s book rather casually reproduces not so much the insidious state of parting with childhood as the gradual catastrophe of the soul and mind of a young man against the background of the destruction of the Jerusalem family, because in fact the line between delinquency and deviance, petty misdeeds and great atrocities is so thin, because the first was forgiven, missed by Marty’s older brother, and therefore he himself then has the right to a little more than simple resistance. In this story of two brothers, one of whom is already a maniac and acting quite consciously, and the second is only maturing, the very concept of family relations undergoes a process of deratization, and at first glance, the most ordinary American family appears as a collection of various moral freaks. And Marty is looking not so much for the causes and effects that led to the most terrible crimes, as for himself in the conditions of a new, changed reality of his life, in which nothing remains of the former solid foundations, but there is in the complex: a beloved brother-maniac, sadist and soulmate; mother is a hysterical bitch; father is a nothingness, mired in everyday quarrels. And to get to the true essence of what is happening and answer the basic questions “what? how? why?” will only be for the audience, whom the director leaves alone with the utmost share of hyperrealistic persuasiveness with the main characters, for whom the exaggerated need for each other nevertheless did not become a salvation for anyone. Brotherly love, kinship ties in the tape are tangled with the mud of deadness, cruelty, abnormality, but only where to find peace if everyone around is drowned by violence?! Inevitably, Schirmer’s “Search” rhymes with McKee’s “Woman,” leveling the notorious family values and the quirky conservatism of any, not just the average, layman.
However, it seems that the director and the author of the book as if not accidentally pedal the theme of horror cinema, which allegedly inspired the brother of the main character to imitate a maniac with the nickname “Beheaded” from bloody slashers of the late 70s. A kind of sanctimonious triusm, when the violence on the streets is blamed not on the streets themselves, but on those who show them by the zombie: TV, cinema, literature would be too easy to blame for all the sins of mankind, but then what would Shirmer, that the Rignies would only prove their creative inconsistency in light of their countercultural status. Speaking with the mouth of a child who speaks the truth that my brother, what have you done through the fault of this bloody pseudo-snuff-movie, the director only gives reason to doubt everything completely, all the more wedge into the leisurely narrative of the tape insertions from this most bloody necroporous 80 level. The boundaries of film and reality are blurred, but not completely; it will happen later. The great irony of this social horror by Scott Schirmer is that three years later the film “Decapitated” by director Kullifer will be released, thus closing the Moebius synematic loop: what was everyday life for Schirmer, his counterpart turns into a postmodern styling under the dirtiest and most radical grindhouse, forcing him to inevitably look at the oppressive nauseating realism of “Search” from the standpoint of hypertext. The fiction film of the seventies turns into a reality film of the zeros, and the sham ultraviolence of "Beheaded" dissolves into the quiet shock of "Search." And if the first is too deliberate, the second is concentrated truthful, despite the fact that both films are dominated by the chthonic power of cinema as such.
Any postcard idyll is not difficult to destroy: one has only to begin to doubt. However, in the life of a fifth-grader, Marty, doubts could not be in place, since he had long ceased to indulge in illusions, perfectly understanding their deceptive value. Diligence, conscientiousness, passion remained in the past, they were replaced by detachment, anger, hatred - for the truth about his own older brother was too terrible to leave gaping wounds somewhere deep in his soul. And Marty had to come to terms with it, although with every new day, with every new bruise and tumult from the ubiquitous school bull, it got harder, harder, more nightmarish. . .
Scott Schirmer’s “search” draws attention primarily to the fact that in this psychological drama of adolescence there is practically no place for false sentiments, pretense and deliberate flattery: everything is like life, only perhaps with a little more mournful black. The film adaptation of Todd Rigney’s book rather casually reproduces not so much the insidious state of parting with childhood as the gradual catastrophe of the soul and mind of a young man against the background of the destruction of the Jerusalem family, because in fact the line between delinquency and deviance, petty misdeeds and great atrocities is so thin, because the first was forgiven, missed by Marty’s older brother, and therefore he himself then has the right to a little more than simple resistance. In this story of two brothers, one of whom is already a maniac and acting quite consciously, and the second is only maturing, the very concept of family relations undergoes a process of deratization, and at first glance, the most ordinary American family appears as a collection of various moral freaks. And Marty is looking not so much for the causes and effects that led to the most terrible crimes, as for himself in the conditions of a new, changed reality of his life, in which nothing remains of the former solid foundations, but there is in the complex: a beloved brother-maniac, sadist and soulmate; mother is a hysterical bitch; father is a nothingness, mired in everyday quarrels. And to get to the true essence of what is happening and answer the basic questions “what? how? why?” will only be for the audience, whom the director leaves alone with the utmost share of hyperrealistic persuasiveness with the main characters, for whom the exaggerated need for each other nevertheless did not become a salvation for anyone. Brotherly love, kinship ties in the tape are tangled with the mud of deadness, cruelty, abnormality, but only where to find peace if everyone around is drowned by violence?! Inevitably, Schirmer’s “Search” rhymes with McKee’s “Woman,” leveling the notorious family values and the quirky conservatism of any, not just the average, layman.
However, it seems that the director and the author of the book as if not accidentally pedal the theme of horror cinema, which allegedly inspired the brother of the main character to imitate a maniac with the nickname “Beheaded” from bloody slashers of the late 70s. A kind of sanctimonious triusm, when the violence on the streets is blamed not on the streets themselves, but on those who show them by the zombie: TV, cinema, literature would be too easy to blame for all the sins of mankind, but then what would Shirmer, that the Rignies would only prove their creative inconsistency in light of their countercultural status. Speaking with the mouth of a child who speaks the truth that my brother, what have you done through the fault of this bloody pseudo-snuff-movie, the director only gives reason to doubt everything completely, all the more wedge into the leisurely narrative of the tape insertions from this most bloody necroporous 80 level. The boundaries of film and reality are blurred, but not completely; it will happen later. The great irony of this social horror by Scott Schirmer is that three years later the film “Decapitated” by director Kullifer will be released, thus closing Moebius’s synematic loop: what was everyday life for Schirmer, his counterpart turns into postmodern styling under the dirtiest and most radical grindhouse, forcing him to inevitably look at the oppressive nauseating realism of “Search” from the standpoint of hypertext. The fiction film of the seventies turns into a reality film of the zeros, and the sham ultraviolence of The Beheaded dissolves into the quiet shock of Search. And if the first is too deliberate, the second is concentrated truthful, despite the fact that both films are dominated by the chthonic power of cinema as such.
Twelve-year-old Marty completely everyday leads the story that his already very adult older brother keeps in his room severed human heads, clearly demonstrating the contents of the bowling bag, where instead of the usual ball there is a skull cut off from the body with empty eye sockets, calmly returning it to the closet and, without betraying himself, sits at the same table with the murderer, listening to the usual reproaches of his father, burning with his ordinary discontent.
And I want to guess where such an unknown monster came from in a peaceful family, watching the attempts of the bewildered Marty to explain his discovery by his brother's addiction to a nightmare video, fearing himself to be infuriated, daily convinced at school that he is not such, retreating to the violence of classmates, in vain counting on the truth without fists.
One after another, questions arise and multiply, opening the background of events, which in an unflappable calm voice describes a modest and shy boy, in the meantime thinking about resistance, putting his hand and starting a speech, tearing the masks of hypocrisy from the conditional decency of parents, asserting in this strange film a moral and educational aspect of consciousness surrounded by artistic horror, in which a young man is looking for answers.
The film itself is not made for the little ones. Rated on the highest scale due to the shocking bodily detail and physiological naturalism of a series of murders, compiled in the form of false fragments from video films, over which the main character hovers his thought, together with a terrible discovery, imperceptibly passing through inner maturation, critically assessing the power of peace and evil, remaining with a sense of love and good, reflecting the seriousness of the intentions of the writer and director, turning the genre horror into the entourage of psychological research, making this actor work on a unique part of a thousand dollars.
A special plot for horror films, when not fear, but deep reflection wanders in the face of the narrator of this story, extracting the best qualities of Gavin Brown, experiencing the hesitation of a shabby teenager, closer to the finale of remaining the last point of stability in a morally dismembered human environment, willy-nilly becoming part of a nightmarish still life, which his out-of-hisself brother will create for goodbye, convincing the younger one that life is an eternal horror that is worth simply learning to endure.
In general, a movie for viewers with strong nerves and a stable psyche, confident that they will be able to master an atypically meaningful and extremely tough horror.