Under the Silver Lake is the kind of film that warrants repeat viewings. While making complete sense of this challenging film may never happen, seeing it more than once can, at least, help clarify what the hell it actually is.
Writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to It Follows is a completely unexpected U-turn in his career and in just about every other imaginable way. While it has heavy touches of Hitchcock, Lynch, De Palma, and Gilliam, it’s also a one-of-a-kind film-watching experience that exists entirely in its own universe. Think Mulholland Drive, Repo Man, Southland Tales, or any other bizarre cult classic that is categorized by its own singular logic.
Andrew Garfield delivers a fantastic performance as a young L.A. dweller/professional burnout that goes on a citywide hunt for a missing girl (Riley Keough) with whom he is infatuated but barely knows. That only partially covers it, however, as the film goes off on numerous and unexpected tangents that often derail, but never entirely wreck, the viewing experience.
Under the Silver Lake is a challenging, brilliant, and, occasionally, tiring film. Though its ambitions often tear its own structure apart, there is always something interesting to find underneath the rubble. It is fascinatingly strange enough to make it one of the most hypnotizing and original films of its time.
GRADE: A-
