‘Susie Searches’ Movie Review: An Offbeat Girl Detective Yarn Led By Kiersey Clemons
Photo from Vertical
From Jeremy Kibler
True-crime podcasts and online validation get fresh spins in Susie Searches, a girl-detective film that begins as a quirky mystery yarn before tying itself up into several knots. Co-writer and director Sophie Kargman makes some risky tonal shifts with her feature directorial debut (co-written by William Day Frank as an expansion of her 2020 short where Kargman herself played Susie). Structurally, it does feel like the extended pilot for a TV series, but while we all wait for the third season of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building or wait for more episodes of The Afterparty’s second season on Apple TV+, Susie Searches is an offbeat original that keeps scrambling expectations.
A brace-faced Kiersey Clemons plays Ohio teen Susie Wallace, a compelling, complicated, one-of-a-kind heroine. Ever since she was a little girl, she could always immediately solve a whodunit from any book her mother would read her. Once her mother got diagnosed with MS and Susie would have to play caregiver, Susie took it upon herself to be a part-time college student and run her own cold-case murder podcast. Susie doesn’t have a following yet, but she works at a burger joint and also starts interning at the sheriff’s department as a gopher. But solving mysteries is her real passion, and the disappearance of a fellow student, popular zen influencer Jesse Wilcox (Alex Wolff), might just be the ticket. Putting her innate sleuthing skills to good, real-life use, Susie starts her own investigation. Nothing is what it seems.
The first thirty minutes are zippy and buoyant with a high energy, making Susie an underdog who just seeks more attention. This goes for the whole film, but Kargman is dexterous behind the camera and in the final edit, going to town with so many visual flourishes, like slow and fast motion, zooms, and split screens. Then there’s a clever “what’s really been going on” reveal behind Jesse Wilcox’s possible kidnapping that actually does take one by surprise.
Clemons is earnest and dogged without overdoing the chipper attitude, and there is an underlying loneliness to Susie that is rather sad and earns empathy. Even though many around Susie may see her as a joke, the film never treats her as a punchline. She’s intelligent but not infallible, completely subverting the Nancy Drew or Veronica Mars-type archetype and proving a big smile of metal and a can-do attitude can be part of a false flag that should not be underestimated. Rounding out the cast is Alex Wolff, who brings layers to what could have been an influencer stereotype; the scene-stealing Rachel Sennott, delivering great side-eye and mean-girl lines as Susie’s exasperated co-worker; Ken Marino, providing his trademark weirdness as Susie’s pony-tailed boss; and Jim Gaffigan and David Walton playing, respectively, the local bird-watching sheriff and his even doofier deputy.
After getting a little lost somewhere in the middle, Susie Searches ratchets up genuine tension in its Clarice Starling/Buffalo Bill-ish climax and finishes strong. One is just left wanting more of Susie to see where she goes from here since there’s a lot more to probe in that complex brain of hers.
Susie Searches hits theaters on July 28, 2023.
Rating: 3/5
