SUSIE SEARCHES - Mark Reviews Movies

Susie Searches, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 27, 2023

Susie Searches takes a character type we think we know all too well and adjusts it in a pretty daring way. The gamble doesn't quite pay off in director Sophie Kargman's mystery/thriller, but that's mainly because the story doesn't explore, examine, or exploit the full potential of said character.

She's Susie Wallis (Kiersey Clemons), a part-time college student trying to balance school, a job at the campus snack bar, and being a caretaker for her ailing mother (played by Jammie Patton). The young woman's true passion, though, is being an amateur detective. Since she was a kid, Susie has had a knack for solving mysteries, guessing the culprit in each and every mystery novel her mother would read to her within the first couple dozen pages or so.

Now, she records and publishes a regular podcast about real-life cold case files. The show's audience numbers are slim or, on multiple occasions, non-existent, but Susie, plucky unpaid detective with braces adorned with colorful rubber bands whom she is, keeps going.

The screenplay, written by William Day Frank and based on a short film that Kargman directed and starred in (Frank wrote that one, too), begins with a lot of infectious energy, as Susie's everyday worries and lifelong drive make her more than just a reflection of all the fictional young detective who have come before her. Clemons' performance is perfectly attuned to the way the character has her cheery public face, as she puts on a big smile and a peppy tone of voice while recording or talking about her podcast, and her quiet, lonely moments of disappointment with how her life is actually going. Nothing about Susie feels like a parody, which is a trap an actor could easily fall into when playing this type of role.

Instead, we're with Susie from the start, because she so feels so genuine in her bright-eyed innocence and underlying loneliness. That degree of attachment and sympathy becomes the main challenge for Clemons, Day, and Kargman to tackle and put before us once the plot is in motion.

Initially, that plot revolves around the disappearance of fellow student Jesse (Alex Wolff), who has had a far more successful presence and career online by way of his meditation videos. Jesse's sudden vanishing becomes the talk of the campus and a regular feature of the local news, but the local police office, where Susie also works as an intern, and Sheriff Loggins (Jim Gaffigan) are stumped. Of course, Susie is certain she can be the one to solve the case—not only for her classmate, but also for the benefit of her show.

That seems to be the course of this plot, as Susie assembles clues and potential suspects, such as Jesse's less-than-upstanding uncle who owns a lot of abandoned property in the area. What's surprising, though, is that Susie seems to solve the case within the first 20 minutes or so of the movie, and sure enough, she gets exactly what she wanted the whole time we've known her: popularity and admiration for her sleuthing skills.

At this point, it becomes difficult to determine how much of that plot to reveal and in what way to reveal it. After all, so much of the movie's intrigue and so many of its issues are connected to the reveal and how the filmmakers juggle our sympathies for the characters with the thriller that the story becomes. Consider that a warning, starting right here.

There's a good reason Susie was able to solve the case of Jesse's disappearance as quickly as she does. The rest of the plot, then, has her trying to cover up that fact, while also dealing with the increased attention on her and her actions, as well as her new friendship with the young man she rescued from captivity.

The core idea of all of this is sound, since Susie is a self-taught expert in the methods of investigation. That means she knows how to cover her tracks and keep a step or two ahead of Loggins and anyone else who might suspect her. The plotting is clever and constantly puts Susie in increasing peril of being discovered. Since we like and basically understand the character, that puts us in the progressively uncomfortable position of sympathizing with her motive and being disturbed by how she goes about keeping her secret.

As for the main problem here, it's that neither Kargman nor Frank seem willing to acknowledge just what Susie's motives and, more importantly, actions say about her. The movie hands us these more empathetic ideas about her—the sick mother and Susie's care for her (although that is abandoned, seemingly for the mechanics of one particular sequence in the house to work), her social awkwardness, her overwhelming loneliness and need for connection. What we actually see of her over the course of the plot, though, is less worthy of commiseration, especially when the movie brings up—and, like the mother, forgets—the traumatic impact of what Jesse has endured.

Instead of dealing with these complexities, the filmmakers too often attempt to sweep them away, by way of comedy and the ultimate appearance of villain whose quickly escalating danger makes Susie look clean by comparison. Susie Searches, then, is never quite the dark thriller it could have been or the honest character study it believes itself to be.

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