Susie Search­es – first-look review

Mid­way through the world pre­mière screen­ing of Susie Search­es, I sat as hot, elec­tric col­ors slashed across the screen, as zany, canned sound effects erupt­ed from the speak­ers, and as lines with clear com­ic intent left the mouths of char­ac­ters and seemed to freeze mid-air, shiv­er, and fal­ter over a silent, stone-faced audi­ence. And I won­dered — what is going on?

Susie Search­es is the fea­ture debut of Los Ange­les-based actress, writer, and direc­tor Sophie Kargman. In 2020, Kargman co-wrote (with William Day Frank) and direct­ed a short ver­sion of this fea­ture. The pri­ma­ry dif­fer­ence here is Kargman swap­ping her­self out as the lead actress for Kiersey Clemons, whose star-mak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty has elud­ed her since her promis­ing break­out in 2015’s Dope. Now, we know why.

As you might expect of a film with a character’s name in the title, Susie Search­es is all about Susie Wal­lis, a bright col­lege stu­dent whose com­pul­sive metic­u­lous­ness and true crime obses­sion have left her friend­less. She has a dead end job at a grease pit called Burg­er Bonan­za and her mom is one of those sad moth­ers in films about women and girls — silent, sick, and con­fined to the bed. Nev­er­the­less, Susie is opti­mistic about her future. After all, she has the two things need­ed by every char­ac­ter descen­dant from that great for­bear­er of cin­e­mat­ic gift­ed chil­dren, Tra­cy Flick: a pas­sion project and an upstart work ethic.

Susie hosts, pro­duces, and exhaus­tive­ly research­es a true crime pod­cast called ​“Susie Search­es,” and she’s deter­mined to boost its reach. Even if that means kid­nap­ping her Tik­Tok med­i­ta­tion guru class­mate Jesse Wilcox (Alex Wolff), and then res­cu­ing him on tape. It goes where you think it will go from there — she gets kind of famous and likes it, but also gets anx­ious. Some­one finds out, she acci­den­tal­ly kills them, the ten­sion mounts, she can’t bear it. Her hubris, her naïvete, her come­up­pance — cul­mi­nat­ing in the final shot!

Kargman employs a lot of bells and whis­tles — a pop­py col­or palette, ani­mat­ed embell­ish­ments, con­stant voiceover, inven­tive cut sequences — and they clang and gong loud­ly. Yet Susie Search­es is still, curi­ous­ly, a down­beat and even melan­cholic film. In fact all the aes­thet­ic rever­ie comes to seem an attempt­ed cov­er, or even apol­o­gy for a film that can bare­ly force its paint­ed-on grin. 

The prob­lem begins with Clemons. A film like Susie Search­es demands a star turn, high volt­age, explo­sive­ly quirky nerdery and histri­on­ics. Think Flick, Nicole Kid­man in To Die For, or either lead in Agniesz­ka Smoczynska’s recent The Silent Twins. Clemons is mute, blank, inex­pres­sive, bored, tac­i­turn, seem­ing even resent­ful of being there. 

Wolff clear­ly dis­likes the type of zoomer he’s por­tray­ing, deliv­er­ing a good deal of his lines with embar­rassed inse­cu­ri­ty. The film is not a fail­ure in toto, but its fail­ure to launch can only be cred­it­ed to Kargman. The edit is the film’s most dis­as­trous com­po­nent, fre­quent­ly cut­ting away from crit­i­cal reac­tions and lin­ger­ing too long on silence, still­ness, and use­less moments of transition.

Kargman knew what type of movie she want­ed to make, and she more or less made one. All the parts are there, yet the intre­pid detec­tive still strug­gles to under­stand how they connect.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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