Critics reviews

Mitchell’s formal rigor keeps the action fluid even as Silver Lake constantly threatens to become too enamored with its playful digressions.

Mitchell’s riff on this undergrad brand of po-mo cynicism is fresh and energetic. For those still fond of Richard Kelly, or who, when sufficiently inebriated, might ‘fess up to owning a Pynchon-inspired muted horn tattoo, there’s much to like here.

It's the stuff of inebriated daydreams rather than outright nightmares. It's as much a midday trip as it is a midnight one: as I emerged from the inappropriately tuxedoed premiere for this rumpled, T-shirted detective odyssey, the film's hazy, zonked afterglow was in a separate dimension from the crisp, inky atmosphere of the Côte d'Azur after dark.

The film’s myriad bizarre elements are mildly satisfying in isolation, but add up to a messy and bloated whole, which leaves most of its plot-strands under-developed and unresolved. . . . After the massive success of It Follows, Mitchell was evidently granted near-total creative freedom for his new project, but as this bloated mess shows, freedom can sometimes be a very bad thing.

Oddly shaped, oddly profound, and full of fascinating (or, equally, frustrating) flaws, Mitchell’s idiosyncratic shaggy-dog story is destined to become a warts-and-all cult favourite.

I was reasonably on board with Mitchell after seeing his first two features, finding him a competent image-maker with a virtuous knack for crafting sly, pointed critiques of American suburbs. It was disconcerting, then, to discover the aimless, derivative vision that is Silver Lake—entirely devoid of the details and touches that indicate first-hand experience.

Mitchell saw all the lights on the long highway to success turn green, and in the full flush of all that indulged freedom, put the top down, turned up the radio and roared off into the LA evening, forgetting that he didn’t have anywhere to go.

Movie allusions and Andrew Garfield’s hard-working star turn as a Los Angeles slacker is about all that holds together this labyrinthine, wildly self-satisfied mystery.

It’s hard to keep an audience invested in something so episodic and overloaded (and long) without giving them characters or situations to care about. The film doesn’t take itself too seriously — but the longer it goes on, the more it seems to want _us_ to take it seriously. All too often, Under the Silver Lake feels like a cinematic lark that accidentally turned into a suicide pact.

If the destination ultimately proves a little less satisfying than the trip, Mitchell and his collaborators fill us with so many moody reveries that we succumb to its warped logic and indelible vividness.

The pervasive but almost offhand menace is supplied by Mitchell’s impeccable, widescreen mise-en-scène; the ordinary dread he locates in an unglamorous, mundane L.A.; and the way even the film’s comedy seems perched on the edge of unease.

After all the rabbit holes and secret codes and hidden messages, _Under the Silver Lake_ is just sad it’s not getting laid. But if that doesn’t sound like a movie for our time, I don’t know what does.