 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Under The Silver Lake • Year: 2018 • Country: USA • Director: David Robert Mitchell • Main cast: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Grace Van Patten, Topher Grace • Runtime: 139 minutes • Production company: Vendian Entertainment, Stay Gold Features, Good Fear Film + Management • TRAILER |
I am sorry, but I just don’t understand Under The Silver Lake (2018). It happened something similar with the previous and most notorious movie of its director David Robert Mitchell: Everybody loves It Follows (2014). You can only read the review our collaborator Nadir made of the film here. I can see her point, but I just didn’t see it like that. I spent such a boring time with It Follows (2014). That’s why I was already a little bit skeptic with Under The Silver Lake (2018). I had previously heard some good reviews of it from people who also liked It Follows (2014), so I was already fearing I might not get into this new movie either. But what I didn’t expect is that it would become a huge disappointment as it was!
For Under The Silver Lake (2018) forget about horror, forget about a dark nightmarish story. This is merely a comedy. A comedy with a big dose of fantasy and surrealism, but it’s basically intended to make the audiences laugh. It has a message within, sure, criticism against all those new riches, the fame seekers, Hollywood posers, and in general all the superficiality that surrounds the romantic idea of success. But it all is not exploited with the intention of causing damage or controversy, plus it’s also taking in a very facile and unharming way.
The main star of the movie is the character played by Andrew Garfield, a pretty good actor (remember him as the face of Spider-Man in what probably is the best movie about the character ever made, The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)) but that here he succumbs into the global meaningless of the movie. He plays a guy called Sam, a fucking loser and irresponsible young man almost impossible to get attached to, as he falls in love with his blonde good-looking neighbor played by Riley Keough. But she mysteriously disappears, and Sam decides to leave all responsibilities aside to start a quest in the search of that girl that he…. loves?
With the plot and some of the events happening in the movie, Under The Silver Lake (2018) reminds a lot of After Hours (1985), that delicious and weird comedy the undisputedly talented Martin Scorsese brought us many decades ago. That was a good film, astonishing and full of an urban fantasy fully entertaining. But this one? I don’t know, maybe it is me, maybe I just don’t get it. But I found it tortuous of watching.
Under The Silver Lake (2018) is not very well directed. The story is chaotic and one loses the interest of following it dangerously soon. The only character that remains on screen enough time to get into minimum is Andrew Garfield’s bum, the rest of the characters are closer to unsubstantial cameos lacking interest. The whole movie is full of an understandable hollowness. I don’t know what was the point of director David Robert Mitchell, also the writer of the movie, but if this was a joke I just didn’t get it.
RATE: 2/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5691670
