Searching: You’ve never seen Windows XP and load screens like this

Ars chats up the team behind Searching. Click here for transcript. (video link)

Searching may seem like a pass on paper: yet another thriller that plays out on computer screens. From Unfriended to Modern Family, viewers have seen this schtick before. To potentially complicate matters further, this one comes from a brand-new director.

But Aneesh Chaganty is not new to telling stories through screens—the Searching director and co-writer spent two years making ads at Google. He famously landed the role after making a viral short called “Seeds” that leveraged Google Glass, another creative constraint. “I quit my job at Google in NYC and moved to LA to make an indie movie,” he tells Ars about Searching. “But I was a filmmaker at Google; I was writing, developing, and directing commercials there. And a lot of my job was to take technology and give it a larger emotional narrative that people understand.”