Under the Silver Lake

Year of release : 2018

Run time : 2h19m

Genre : Surrealist / Neo Noir / Dark Comedy / Thriller

Cast : Andrew Garfield, Topher Grace, Riley Keough, Sydney Sweeney, Jimmi Simpson

The movie was written, produced and directed by David Robert Mitchell.

It’s 2011, and Sam is a 33 year old who is more interested in conspiracy theories than paying his overdue rent. He is dating an actress he has regularly s3x with, and is spying on an older woman who is always topless on her balcony with her birds.

Another young neighbour he spies on, invites him over one evening, after he feeds her dog.Her friends come over, and he invites her to a bar, but she refuses, saying she can the next day. She seems to be reading something into the fireworks adorning the sky, although there’s no celebration.

When he goes back to his young neighbour, he finds the apartment empty, and the landlord tells him she and her friends left in the middle of the night. Breaking into their place, he finds a box they left behind, but one of them comes to take it, and that’s when he notices a symbol on the wall, like a poker diamond mask, and follows the girl. A car stops and picks her up, and they stop by a stadium, looking at the sign, and then take a boat ride, to give a man the box.

He follows them to a club named Purgatory.

The whole time, on tv, they are asking where is a billionaire who’s gone missing.

Later, on tv, he hears the billionaire is dead, and he realizes the hat the police found belongs to the neighbour who disappeared in the middle of the night.

Also, at the same time, there’s a serial k1ller who k1lls dogs!

 

Visiting a man who has masks of real celebrities’ faces, he tells him the double poker diamond mask symbol means “stay quiet”, from a 1930’s book called The Hobo Guide. The man also tells him that our world is filled with codes,pacts and subliminal messages. Sam asks him if it’s possible that some messages are not subliminal but only for certain people, and he says Yes.

Going to the club he received a cookie as invitation for from one of Jesus’ brides (an indie band named Jesus and the brides of Dracula) one of his friends tells him a girl he dated told him this band has hidden messages in their music.

Later on, he finds out the actresses in a movie which was just released are escorts. So he calls the agency, and one of them makes a house call. For someone who doesn’t have money to pay his rent, he has a lot of money to throw around.

He only wants to talk to her, and after she walks away, he realizes how to decode the messages in the band’s songs. And ends up at the Griffith Observatory. A man who calls himself The Homeless King comes after a while of waiting, asks him to wear a blindfold, and takes him to a tunnel, where he takes his blindfold off, and leaves. He realizes he’s in a bomb shelter, and gets out through a store’s underground hole.

Going back to his conspiracy theory friend’s place, the one with the famous people’s masks, he finds out from the police that he committed suicide. Sam doesn’t think so, so he breaks into his home, and goes to his “shelter” to watch the recordings. He sees that he was k1lled by the woman in the owl mask, that the comic book talked about.

Sam doesn’t quit, and investigates further, reaching the place of The Songwriter, who apparently wrote all the recorded hit songs in history, which are supposed to have hidden meaning.

Slowly, but surely, he moves closer and closer to the truth, to what happened to his young neighbour.

I personally enjoyed the movie. Sam doesn’t seem to have a job, and seems to be floating aimlessly through life. He has friends who work in the entertainment industry and try to get famous, and that’s how mostly, he gets into parties. His mother calls him from time to time, and he lies to her he’s very busy, but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything all day.

Sam buys conspiracy theory comics that he reads in his free time. Whenever he reads the comics, comic-book style animations are on screen.

“Under the Silver Lake”is the name of the comic book, and a line from the comic.

The movie has a David Lynch movie vibe ,but better, because you understand what’s going on, it’s not like a dream which doesn’t make sense.

The acting was good.

The soundtrack was good, eerie.

The visual effects and the animations were good.

The movie received positive reviews, with the census being over 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and IMDB, and yet grossed only 2 million dollars against a budget of 8 million dollars.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the movie contains nudity and mature content.

Rating : Worth a watch !