Susie Searches (Kargman, 2022)

Susie Wallis (Kiersey Clemons) is sorta like a Black Veronica Mars with braces. And if that reference now dates me, let me add that I mean it as a compliment.

Yes, there is a television-like quality to the sets and production values, and yes the bond with a single parent and the interactions with local police are shared with the beloved show about the private detective. And…yes…like Veronica Mars the film walks a tight line of having a young, female protagonist who is sometimes in peril by virtue of the fact that she is young and female while not simply exploiting the woman-in-jeopardy trope that is the staple of so much crime narrative.

Susie is a podcaster rather than a private investigator, and she is also a college student and the primary suspect in the disappearance of a classmate. The plot is pretty conventional, but honestly, it is not particularly important. One way this feels more like a television pilot than a feature film is that it is almost all set up with very little development or surprises. Those would come later, as a crime of the week would give the backstory time to breathe and develop that just isn’t there in a 100-minute movie.

That means that Clemons has to carry the film, and she does an admirable job. Susie is neither too precocious nor too adult. (Most films or shows set in college are populated by characters who look thirtysomething playing teenagers or early twenties students). I didn’t quite have the “I am seeing for the first time someone I will be watching for the rest of my life” reaction that accompanied seeing America Ferrara in Real Women Have Curves or Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, but I did feel like I was watching an actress capable of crafting a character who is interesting in her own right and not merely present to be decorative in a man’s story.

Susie Searches expands upon a short film that director Sophie Kargman crafted in which she played the titular podcaster. It is not going to make a gazillion dollars, but it would be nice if it turned enough of a profit that Kargman could get some more work. It is nice to see a genre piece, even a low-budget one, anchored by characters who would normally be pushed to the margins in more commercial fare. We’ll get more characters like Susie, I suspect, when we get more content creators like Kargman.