Under The Silver Lake

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, and Topher Grace   

Director: David Robert Mitchell

140 minutes (15) 2018

Mubi DVD Region 2

Rating: 8/10

Review by Peter Schilling

A comedy-drama with specific elements of Hitchcockian noir, Under The Silver Lake is also an atypical rom-com offering, embedded with general themes of lazily modern Californian romanticism. Slacker Sam (Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spider-Man) spies on his topless neighbour, and beats up little kids for vandalising his car. He has dreams of cannibalism but can’t pay his rent. Sam drives around town, where a notorious dog-killer is on the loose. He follows three girls who meet a cosplay pirate, and encounters a spectral beauty. While he’s evading a phantom stalker, Sam is sprayed by a skunk, and unfortunately, that anti-social stink never quite goes away.

“Why do you have dog-biscuits in your pocket?”

Sam admires a comic-zine of urban mystery and reconstituted folklore. Vital clues are found in cheesy trivia. UTSL is an astute composition of conspiracy theory, delusional weirdo characters, clever zeitgeist surfing, contenders from across Hollywood history, and quirky tragicomic ambiguities. David Robert Mitchell (director of cult psycho-horror movie It Follows, 2014), strives eagerly for craftsmanship values, and his ability to blend varied influences results in a picture that’s far more than just the sum of its parts. A few inspirationally David Lynchian moments are outstanding. Other pop-culture examples are decoded but re-mastered for ironic effect. Some odd conceptual stuff seems out of Martin Scorsese’s off-beat After Hours (1985), and bits of Terry Gilliam’s Fisher King (1991) are lurking about, here and there, determining unexpected tones and off-kilter content.

Jesus and his vampire brides might know something about a missing woman that our scruffy hero is clumsily searching for. Media images stolen for a celebratory recycling become refreshed for relevance far beyond their original meanings, now locked away in confused memory. The finale concerns a doomsday cult taking refuge underground from a seemingly inevitable apocalypse. More like a fascinating curio of Americana than any kind of cultural excavation or an intriguing expose, UTSL still has undeniably abundant charm and revels frequently in its joyful mystique.