2019 Glasgow Film Festival Review - Under The Silver Lake (2019)

I left Under the Silver Lake completely scatter-brained. I had no idea what had just happened. Director David Robert Mitchell essentially throws as much ludicrousness at the wall as possible and hopes some of it will stick. The film is a complete and utter mess. It has no idea what direction it wants to go in, nor are its characters fleshed out beyond pornographic eye candy in the case of females, and idiotic, introverted stoners in the case of the males. The way women are presented in this film is a bit appalling actually, even if Mitchell’s presentation is designed to be satirical. Ostensibly, the film is about conspiracy theories and so it just lobs a load out there: dog killers, serial killers, cereal boxes, religious cults, murder, homeless people, bomb shelters, comic books, maps, Nintendo magazines, parrots, skunks, indie bands, parties full of horrible LA posers that no one could possibly stand for longer than a few minutes. If all that sounds a little confusing, then yeah, you’re right. It doesn’t seem to know whether its satirising its protagonist or not either, portraying his belief in conspiracies as ridiculous at times, inspired at others. His unemployed, lethargic lifestyle never seems to be an issue as he bumbles his way on through the convoluted and contrived plot.

The story follows Sam (Andrew Garfield), an LA slacker who enjoys getting high and gazing at his scantily clad neighbours through binoculars. When he spies Sarah (Riley Keough) laying around his pool in a bikini (because of course), he instantly looks for an excuse to introduce himself. Soon he has ingratiated himself into her flat to hang out. Conveniently, she has to protect her pooch with a notorious dog killer on the loose. The next day however, Sarah has disappeared completely, mysterious symbols have appeared across her flat and a group of LA party-gals have stolen the remainder of her belongings. The plot then descends into Sam mooching across LA, from exclusive parties to chess parties to comic book stores and so on. His life disintegrates in cliched fashion – his imminent eviction, the towing of his car etc. – but this doesn’t faze Sam on his all-encoming quest to find out what’s happened to Sarah.

Comparisons to David Lynch and Mulholland Drive especially are hard to avoid but Under the Silver Lake doesn’t get close. Putting Patrick Fischler in your film doesn’t make it Lynchian. The film never really knows where it’s going at any one point jumping between plot points, wildly shifting in tone from one scene to the next and introducing a new conspiracy without satisfactorily resolving the previous one or linking it to any overall story. It almost seems that we’re supposed to forget about all the stupidity that’s come before with a weak, nonsensical ending about cults – Grand Theft Auto parodies Hollywood far better than this. The film is never self-aware enough to fully satirise what’s going on, often doubling-down on its ridiculousness. Moreover, there is no normality in the film to reference itself against, with the exception of a minor character who occasionally pitches up to have sex with Sam. She tells him he’s weird for believing in all the conspiracy theories and yet he is vindicated by the story. There is nothing especially likeable about Sam, but as he seems to be the best of a bad bunch, the film accepts his sickening voyeurism and lack of empathy as par for the course.

The whole thing is so deliberately idiosyncratic in everything it does that you just stop caring about any of it, especially as you’ll soon come to realise that it probably has very little to do with the plot anyway. It’s just there to make the film quirky. Funny t-shirts and pop culture references are not a substitute for personality, something that the characters in Under the Silver Lake sorely lack. Andrew Garfield does well with what he’s given, convincingly pulling off Sam’s dual apathy and obsession. To the film’s credit, there are some clever shots and some genuinely funny moments too, the best of which involves Sam beating up a load of children for vandalising his car. These moments are few and far between, however, and instead we’re left to endure the stilted dialogue of privileged folks we don’t really care for, for over two hours.

As a fan of It Follows, I went into Under the Silver Lake with some expectations that I wish I hadn’t. The film is all over the place and doesn’t really seem to have anything to say. I don’t want to have to listen to any of its infuriating characters ever again. Frustratingly, there are individual scenes, specific ideas and the occasional plot point which are genuinely interesting, but these all get lost in the murky nonsense that meanders through LA over a runtime that is far too long.