2023 Movie
Dir. Sophie Kargman · United States of America · English
A great cast and intriguing premise are wasted in this disappointing mystery
Susie Searches begins intriguingly for two reasons: first, there’s the strange disappearance of popular college student Jesse Wilcox (Alex Wolff), and then there’s the fact that that mystery is solved in the film’s first 20-ish minutes. With over an hour left of its runtime at this point, Susie Searches seems to suggest Jesse’s disappearance was only a red herring, and that we’re in for something juicier now.
Alas, the rest of the movie — which stars Kiersey Clemons as the titular socially awkward student sleuth who finds Jesse — never lives up to this promise. An encouraging cast list is let down by thin characters; this isn’t true just for the supporting parts played by Rachel Sennott, Jim Gaffigan, Ken Marino, Dolly Wells, and Wolff, but, far more detrimentally to the film, Susie herself. Her motivations are complicated by more than just a desire for the truth, but, despite Clemons’ best efforts, this not-quite Nancy Drew is never all that psychologically compelling or believable. In a film that hinges on big twists revolving around its protagonist, that’s a fatal flaw, because we’re only ever half-invested. Though it may play better with younger audiences, anyone else will likely find its promising cast to be the biggest red herring of all.
Susie is an awkward college student who seizes the opportunity to bolster her popularity and her under-the-radar true-crime podcast by attempting to solve the disappearance of a classmate.
A lonely college student with a knack for solving mysteries investigates the disappearance of a popular classmate, but the case is more complicated than initially suggested.
At the beginning of the film, it feels like we’re in for a cutting critique of online celebrity and those who strive for it. There’s Susie the armchair detective, of course: a true crime-obsessed Internet sleuth with single-digit subscribers who treats other people’s nightmares like fun little puzzles to solve. But there’s also Jesse, a meditation influencer who racks up millions of views with videos filled with blandly positive inanities like “be kind.” These introductory scenes initially feel like the groundwork for some sharp social observations to come — making it an even bigger shame that the film veers off course and wastes this potential.
Not even Rachel Sennott in mean-girl mode can save this.
Farah Cheded is a UK-based curator at A Good Movie to Watch and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved freelance critic whose work has been published at outlets including The Playlist, Paste Magazine, and Film School Rejects. She lives in fear of the day she runs out of 'Columbo' episodes to watch.
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