UNDER THE SILVER LAKE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL / STARRING: ANDREW GARFIELD, WENDY VANDEN HEUVEL, RILEY KEOUGH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
After a wayward man meets a mysterious woman swimming in his apartment block pool, her swift disappearance leads him on a conspiracy trip across LA in David Robert Mitchell’s ambitious yet flawed follow up to his 2015 masterpiece It Follows.
Andrew Garfield stars as Sam, an unemployed man who struggles to pay his rent. After he is threatened with eviction, he falls for his neighbour Sarah (Riley Keough) whose allure is enough to send Sam into a frenzy and ends up costing him his sanity as he does whatever it takes to find her.
No one can ever say that David Robert Mitchell never tries to tell his stories in a unique way. This dramatic mystery is soaked from head to toe in atmosphere from the eloquent cinematography FROM Mike Gioulakis (who also collaborated with Mitchell on It Follows) to a terrific lead performance from Garfield as a man who clearly isn’t stable.
However, all of these positives cannot save the film from being a quite frankly convoluted and messy narrative – think a visual representation of the Charlie Day meme from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. At multiple moments throughout the 139 minute marathon of a runtime, one was left baffled and confused trying to piece together what was transpiring on screen. The film is littered with obvious Hollywood and pop culture references (even though the year the film takes place is never made entirely clear) that it is hard to tell exactly what style and tone Mitchell was going for.
On the surface it’s a neo-noir thriller but towards the final act it slips into a weird cult film that is sure to alienate a large portion of the audience.
One final positive that just about keeps everything together is another stellar score from Disasterpiece (who yet again worked on It Follows). The soundtrack perfectly accompanies the pure drug fueled insanity that takes place before you snapback into reality wondering where you are when it ends.
After his home run debut, David Robert Mitchell continues his unique style of telling strange stories in a visually appealing way but majorly misses the mark with Under the Silver Lake. A muddled narrative containing too many tangled plot strings that confuses rather than entertains.
BLU-RAY EXTRAS
The Blu-Ray release of the film contains a few behind the scenes featurettes that will be beneficial for fans of the film, otherwise, there isn’t anything overly worthy of purchasing the disc over a VOD rental.
Q&A WITH ANDREW GARFIELD @ PRINCE CHARLES CINEMA, LONDON [11:44]
WHAT LIES UNDER THE SILVER LAKE [10:25] – Behind the scenes of the movies production design
BEAUTIFUL SPECTRE – MUSICAL NEO-NOIR [9:30] – Behind the score interview with Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpiece), the composer of the films score
