Under the Silver Lake

by Philip Price

Director: David Robert Mitchell 
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough & Topher Grace 
Rated: R
Runtime: 2 hours & 19 minutes

"We crave mystery because there is none left."
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Director David Robert Mitchell's (“It Follows”) sophomore effort feels like one of those movies the filmmaker dreamed of making his entire adolescence-since he first laid eyes on a Hitchcock film-but that he also never thought all the way through to the point of execution. In all instances, “Under the Silver Lake” feels like more of an idea than an actual reality both in the sense of the development of the project and the final cut of the film that actually exists. It's somewhat ironic that a movie about cults, conspiracy theories and hidden messages is ultimately destined to become a cult classic itself, but this is where we are more than a year after the film first premiered at Cannes.

The film is all over the place in terms of story and starts way too many strands for the audience to keep up with or care about in any profound manner, but the style and ambition is all on the screen; in every frame. It's clear Mitchell seems to not only have an affinity for pop culture or, more specifically, the golden age of Hollywood, but where he goes in the screenplay for “Under the Silver Lake” makes it all the more evident the director yearns to know what it was like to exist in this period of time; idolizing it to the extent he's created a mythos around it only he can piece together so as to have a piece for himself.

Andrew Garfield seems to be doing what he feels the story calls for - as do all the numerous extras in crazy costumes - but while the ambition is evident and the style is admittedly on point, the intent remains unclear. This yearning to create a mystery through our culture, a secret society in the elite, and a theory of how reality exists as constructed through the media and our consumption of entertainment are each thoughts that might credit contemplation were the film to have anything to say about them beyond, "they could exist! This could be real!"