Butler's Cinema Scene

Andrew Garfield

“UNDER THE SILVER LAKE” My rating: C (On Amazon Prime)

139 minutes | MPAA rating: R

David Robert Mitchell’s “Under Silver Lake” looks so good while evoking a palpable aura of dread (despite its sunny setting) that it pains to report that the movie makes no damn sense.

If you had to categorize it, “Silver Lake” might fall in the “amateur sleuth” category — a twenty something Los Angelino goes looking for his missing neighbor (an eroticism-radiating beauty, naturally) and discovers things he was never looking for.

To be charitable, Mitchell’s screenplay is much more about the search than the solving; still, after nearly 2 1/2 hours of wandering through a world of pointless parties and bizarre developments it’s a disappointment not to get some answers.

Sam (Andrew Garfield) is jobless and aimless. He’s facing eviction and the repossession of his car, but doesn’t seem overly concerned. Instead he eavesdrops on the female residents of his apartment complex. There’s the lady who tends to her pet birds topless. And especially there’s the gorgeous blonde who likes late-night swims.

Her name is Sarah (Riley Keough…Elvis’ granddaughter); she’s obsessed with classic movies and while swimming likes to strike poses that mimic those of Marilyn Monroe in a famous poolside photo shoot shortly before her death.

Sam is invited to her apartment to watch one of her faves (“How to Marry a Millionaire” with Marilyn, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable). The evening ends chastely, and the next day Sam is puzzled to find the apartment empty. Sarah is missing; so are her roommates, all the furniture. All that’s left behind is a box of snapshots.

And the chase is on.

Riley Keough

The labyrinthine plot has no shortage of bizarre elements. There’s a billionaire philanthropist who has gone missing; Sarah’s disappearance may be related.  There’s a trio of weird girls who draw Sam’s attention, and a guy who pops up at unexpected moments dressed like a pirate (with eyepatch).

Somebody has been “murdering” dogs in the neighborhood. Sam stumbles across a locally-produced comic book (we see some of it animated) drawn and written by a reclusive geek (Patrick Fischer) who has a theory about a succubus who at night attacks her sleeping victims wearing only a feathered owl mask.

There’s a rock band whose lyrics may hold clues, and a homeless man (David Yow) who wears a fake crown and robes and leads Sam into an underground complex that looks a lot like an abandoned fallout shelter. There’s an ancient fellow (Jeremy Bob) who lives in an isolated mansion and claims to have written every important pop song of the last 50 years (he’s particularly proud of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”).

There are endless parties — on rooftops, in cemeteries, on the grounds of posh mansions — populated by the same vacuous party girls and pretty boys.

And the film is crammed to the gills with classic movie references.

“Under the Silver Lake” evokes other movies, too, especially David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales.”

Especially “Southland”…Kelly made that flawed epic of California weirdness as the followup to his brilliant “Donnie Darko.”  “Silver Lake” is Mitchell’s first film since 2014’s “It Follows,”
one of the most original — and disturbing — horror films in recent memory. In both instances a classic was followed by a flop.

Garfield is okay as Sam, but it’s hard to care about the guy or his quest when he exhibits lowlife behavior like beating up a couple of middle school kids who have vandalized his car, breaking and entering and other unsavory exploits.

| Robert W. Butler