Movie Review: Under the Silver Lake

Under the Silver Lake **** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Robert Mitchell.

Written by: David Robert Mitchell.

Starring: Andrew Garfield (Sam), Riley Keough (Sarah), Rikki Lindhome (Actress), Callie Hernandez (Millicent Sevence), Topher Grace (Bar Buddy), Zosia Mamet (Troy), Grace Van Patten (Balloon Girl), Jimmi Simpson (Allen), Annabelle Dexter-Jones (Fannie), Laura-Leigh Claire (Mae), Wendy Vanden Heuval (Topless Bird Woman), Deborah Geffner (Mom), Rex Linn (Manager), Luke Baines (Jesus), Allie MacDonald (Meek Bride), Victoria Bruno (Clara Bow Bride), Lola Blanc (Reading Glasses Bride), Patrick Fischler (Comic Man), Bobbi Salvor Menuez (Shooting Star #1), Sydney Sweeney (Shooting Star #2), David Yow (Homeless King), Jeremy Bobb (Songwriter), Don McManus (Final Man).

 

The hero – and I use that term loosely – of David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake stumbles across Los Angeles looking into a mystery that he isn’t qualified to look into, and which few others seem to care about. There is something unique about Los Angeles that gives rise to these types shambling, rambling detective stories – I think of films like Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye or the Coens’ The Big Lebowski or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice as other examples – detective stories about people who seem out of sync with the time and place they are in, and maybe operating under the influence of something – which seeps into the style of the movie as well as our main character’s psyche. And yet, Under the Silver Lake is its own thing as well – in part because Mitchell is seemingly aware of the time and place that his movie is set in, and doesn’t overlook it. His hero is Sam (Andrew Garfield), a white man in his 20s, who is undeniably bright, but also doesn’t seem to do much of anything, but stumbles his way through life without any real problems. In some ways – many ways, most ways – Under the Silver Lake is a straight faced satire of white privilege, whose main character is, in essence, an asshole. And yet, the questions he asks – and his existential yearning for something more is still real. It is a tricky thing Mitchell is trying to pull off – perhaps that’s why many seem to think he didn’t really pull it off. There is a reason the film was delayed more than once, than dumped into a couple of theaters right before its VOD release nearly a year after its Cannes premiere. That says more about the film industry than it does about this film however. Under the Silver Lake doesn’t fit into a neat little package of any kind – so it isn’t likely to find a huge audience. It will find the audience who deserve it sooner or later however.

 

Sam seems to basically drifting through his life in L.A. Unlike many people in the city who are un-or-under-employed, Sam doesn’t seem to have ambition to do something else. He’s not, by the looks of things, an aspiring actor, writer, director, musician or much of anything else either. He sits on his apartment balcony – one that reminds you of Marlowe’s apartment complex in The Long Goodbye – watching the topless bird lady across the way, until his sometimes girlfriend (played by Rikki Lindhome) – an actress – comes by with sushi. As they have sex, they discuss the signed Kurt Cobain poster on the wall. Sam’s life is interrupted when he meets Sarah (Riley Keough) – who also lives across the way. They hang out, laugh and flirt one evening – and make plans to hang out the next afternoon, and then she’s just gone. Sam doesn’t want to let this go, and so he starts digging. And digging and digging. Sam is already a conspiracy nut in the first place – and he starts to find more and more angles to his conspiracy as he moves along. There is an emo band whose music may have hidden messages. And that leads him to one thing after another after another. The film becomes about media, meaning, how Hollywood uses and discards young actress and lots of other things.

 

Do all these threads in the movie come together? I’m not entirely convinced that they do – at least on the first viewing. Is this film a cohesive statement on Hollywood – like David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. – or a mess of ideas that play out in fascinating ways but never cohere – like Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (another film I like a lot more than most people do, so I guess you can take that as a warning if you want – but I really do think Kelly’s film is a messy, ambitious film that only someone immensely talented could have come up with, making me incredibly sad that he hasn’t made a film in a decade now).

 

What I do know is that I loved every second of watching Under the Silver Lake. It is the best work yet of Andrew Garfield, who turns has an incredibly tricky role as Sam – as he is both likable, and yet objectively, a complete asshole. You wouldn’t want to get stuck next to him at a party, because he’s talk your ear off about whatever conspiracy theory he has recently read about online. And yet, even if you were trapped with him, you’d end of smiling more than truly angry, because he’s kind of charming. Mitchell – and Garfield – realize that Sam’s way of thinking is poisonous more than anything else – and perhaps ruining America. Under the Silver Lake is hardly an endorsement of this Alex Jones-dystopian world Sam seems to think we are living in – and uncovers in the movie. It is a poisonous way of thinking, and ruins everything. If nothing means what we think it means, and it’s all some cover for something else – does anything mean anything? Even the things that move us are not what we think they are. If we think that way, we end up like Sam in the last shot in this movie.

 

Under the Silver Lake is not a perfect movie. But as I grow older, I get less and less interested in perfection, and more interested in a film like this that searches for something, that lashes out in many different directions, and comes up with imperfect or no answers at all. This is a film that recalls many films – the ones mentioned among them, and one where every reference has a hidden meaning. I’m not sure that Mitchell fully achieves what he wants to achieve here – and I know that people are going to completely misread the film. This will be one that will have sponsored content at the bottom of every movie article for years advertising that this is what “Under the Silver Lake really means”. Which is exactly the type of thing the movie is satirizing, and finding fault in. This film is being buried a little by A24 – normally a studio who specializing in finding an audience for films that aren’t as easy sell. That should tell you everything you need to know about the film. If it excites you, then this is a film for you.

Movie Review: It Follows

It Follows
Directed by: David Robert Mitchell.
Written by: David Robert Mitchell.
Starring: Maika Monroe (Jay Height), Keir Gilchrist (Paul), Jake Weary (Hugh / Jeff), Lili Sepe (Kelly Height), Olivia Luccardi (Yara), Daniel Zovatto (Greg Hannigan), Bailey Spry (Annie).

If you have read anything about It Follows, the terrific new horror film by David Robert Mitchell, it probably sounds like any number of other, post-John Carpenter’s Halloween, slasher movie. Yes, this is another film in which a beautiful, suburban teenage girl engages in sexual activity, and then is stalked by a killer of some sort for the rest of the film – perhaps as punishment for daring to have a sexual appetite. Carpenter (who is clearly an huge influence on this film) kind of established that premise with his 1978 original, low budget shocker – and it’s been copied ever since in all the Halloween sequels – not to mention the Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street and seemingly hundreds of other, lesser known knock-offs. The idea has been done to death, and satirized to death (sometimes in those very sequels that are still engaging in the same plot) – and the whole thing has become a tired, horror movie cliché. Why, then, does it work so amazingly well in It Follows? Partly, it’s because of the way director Mitchell shoots the film – lots of long, unbroken shots, with a swirling camera. Part because of the way the “killer” (which takes on different forms) stalks its victims – you’ve seen “slow” killers before, but never this slow. It gets you not because of its speed, but because it seemingly cannot be killed, and will never stop coming for you. You can outrun it for a while, but eventually, it will be right there again. But mainly it’s because Mitchell does unexpected things with the group of friends he centers his movie on. Even without this killer stalking them, this group would have enough drama to fill a movie – there is more than enough hormones, lust, petty jealousies and heartbreak going through this group to keep the movie fascinating, even when Mitchell isn’t trying to scare you (which he does expertly). It’s also because of the way Mitchell portrays sex itself in the movie – there is no “slut shaming” going on in It Follows, unlike many horror films. The characters are not being “punished” for their transgressions. The movie doesn’t really paint as neither good nor bad for their young characters – rather, it portrays it as having the potential to be either of those things – and how one mistake can haunt you for the rest of your life.

The movie stars the talented Maika Monroe, from last year’s great horror movie The Guest (which not enough of you saw!) as Jay, a teenage girl out of high school, but not quite in college yet. She’s dating a new guy – slightly older, named Hugh (Jake Weary), and although they haven’t had sex yet – she knows they will soon, and is looking forward to it, in a slightly dreamy, naïve way (no, she is not a virgin – but her romantic ideals around sex still mark her as somewhat immature). Eventually, Hugh and Jay do have sex – in his car, and in the post coital period, he shocks her by knocking her out with chloroform – when she comes to, she is tied to a chair. Hugh did this not to hurt Jay – at least not more than he already has – but to tell her what to expect. He has just passed something to her – and it’s something she can only get rid of by having sex with someone else. Someone or something will follow her – it may be someone she knows, maybe not, it may appear alive, it may not – but a few things are clear: it won’t stop until it kills her and no one else can see it. And if Jay lets it kill her, then the presence will immediately go back to trying to kill Hugh again, so at best, this is a temporary reprieve that you can never truly shake.

I know this probably sounds slightly ridiculous – but believe me, it isn’t (besides, go through the basic plot of pretty much any horror movie, and they all sound ridiculous, don’t they?). As Roger Ebert never tired of saying “A movie isn’t about what it’s about – it’s about how it’s about it” (or something like that anyway). What It Follows does is take that ridiculous premise, and play off those previous horror movie clichés, to make a film that both scary and disturbing – and more so the later than the former. As Jay enlists more of her friends to try and help her, the group dynamics become clear. Paul (Keir Gilchrist) looks longingly at Jay – it’s clear he’s in love with her, and she thinks of him as little more than a friend, and although she toys with him a little, it isn’t cruelly. Greg (Daniel Zovatto) is the “cool” kid across the street – the one with the car and the cabin they can run away to and hide out. There’s also Jay’s sister (Lili Sepe) and her friend – and they all band together to “help” Jay – even if none of them really can.

The movie does deliver on the scares – for the most part. To be honest, the big horror movie climax is actually one of the weakest scenes in the movie. It tries too hard to be scary, and is undercut at least a little by the inherent ridiculousness of the killer – something that doesn’t hurt the rest of the movie, because it doesn’t have the kind of sustained, physical confrontation with it. The rest of the scare scenes in the movie work remarkably well though. This isn’t a bloody movie by any means, and neither does it rely on cheap scares. The “killer” makes George A. Romero zombies look like sprinters. What the movie does remarkably well is building a mounting sense of inescapable dread.

The movie is even more disturbing and unsettling than scary though – especially as it moves along, and its implications become clear. Yes, It Follows could very well be read as a metaphor for an STD or unwanted pregnancy – if you want it to. But I think the implications of the movie and its view of sex are far more universal, and somewhat saddening.