UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (2018)

Studio:      A24
Director:    David Robert Mitchell
Writer:      David Robert Mitchell
Producer:  Michael De Luca, Chris Bender, Jake Weiner, Adele Romanski, David Robert Mitchell
Stars:     Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace, Callie Hernandez, Don McManus, Jeremy Bobb, Riki Lindhome, Zosia Mamet, Patrick Fischler, Jimmi Simpson

Review Score:

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Summary:

Secret codes, hidden messages, and an enigmatic missing woman drive an underachieving man to solve a cryptic L.A. mystery.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Unemployed Sam comes home to an eviction notice from the building manager at Rancho Silverlake Apartments. Sam’s mother calls to tell him about a movie playing on TV starring her favorite classic film star Janet Gaynor.

Sam uses binoculars to spy on his topless neighbor as she tends to her pet birds. Sam also spies on enigmatic new neighbor Sarah as she lounges by the pool.

Sam’s actress friend stops by. The actress asks about a strange smell, to which Sam responds that there are skunks in the area. While having sex, the actress notices a Kurt Cobain poster on Sam’s wall. The couple then sees a TV newscast report that billionaire mogul Jefferson Sevence has gone missing. The actress also notices Sam’s vintage Playboy whose cover featuring a woman in water was the first image he ever masturbated to.

At The Last Bookstore, Sam picks up an illustrated homemade zine titled “Under the Silver Lake.” Sam asks the clerk to put him in touch with the comic’s creator.

Sam sees a skunk on his walk home. Sarah finds Sam feeding a biscuit to her dog Coca-Cola outside her door. Sam mentions that his dog died recently. Sarah invites Sam inside. Sam and Sarah take an interest in one another while watching “How to Marry a Millionaire” and getting stoned. Sam notices an engraved metal bracelet on Sarah’s wrist. Sarah’s two roommates return home with a strange man dressed as a pirate who is actually Jefferson Sevence in disguise. Sarah abruptly ends the evening, but invites Sam to hang out the next day.

Sam beats up two stupid boys who vandalize his car.

Sam reads “Under the Silver Lake.” The comic connects a recent wave of animal deaths attributed to ‘The Dog Killer’ to a failed silent film actor who resented successful showbiz dogs. The actor’s suicide inspired ‘The Edendale Curse,’ which posited that no one would ever be happy in the community until all of the dogs were dead.

Sam has a nightmare about following a dog treat trail to Sarah’s dead pet. Sam sees a man dressed as Sarah eating the dog’s entrails before jolting awake.

Sam returns to Sarah’s apartment to find it completely empty. Before issuing a verbal warning about Sam’s unpaid rent, the building manager explains that Sarah and her roommates moved out in the middle of the night.

Sam goes to a bar with his buddy to talk about Sarah and The Dog Killer.

Sam sneaks into Sarah’s empty apartment. Sam finds a shoebox of belongings left behind and pockets a Polaroid of Sarah. Sam also notices a symbol of two diamonds drawn on a wall.

A girl named Troy comes to collect the box. Sam secretly follows Troy and her friends Fannie and Mae throughout town until they pass the box to the pirate.

Sam follows the three women to the rooftop bar at The Standard where rising local band Jesus and the Brides of Dracula plays. Sam becomes enamored with a Balloon Girl who does a dance performance. Sam gets kneed in his groin when he tries confronting Troy to ask about Sarah’s sudden disappearance.

Sam runs into his friend Allen. They both receive cookies that act as tickets to an upcoming secret concert at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Sam and Allen spot Millicent Sevence reacting when news breaks that her father was found dead with three women believed to be prostitutes. Later that night, Sam learns that Sarah’s hat was among items recovered at the death scene.

The Comic Man who authored “Under the Silver Lake” calls to invite Sam to his house. After fleeing from a man in the shadows on his walk home, Sam ends up sprayed by a skunk.

Sam’s actress friend stops by while Sam bathes to remove the skunk scent. The actress reads pages from the zine that talk about ‘The Owl’s Kiss,’ a mythological murderer who wears an owl mask and is rumored to belong to a cult responsible for dozens of deaths across the Los Angeles basin. Sam confesses his fascination with secret messages hidden in popular culture that he believes are meant to be decoded by society’s elite.

Sam dreams of Sarah again. A tow truck driver repossesses Sam’s car. Sam spots a billboard featuring his ex-girlfriend.

Sam meets the Comic Man at his house. Sam asks about the double diamond symbol he saw at Sarah’s apartment. Comic Man shows Sam a cipher of old hobo codes identifying the symbol as meaning, “keep quiet.” Comic Man also suggests that the recent wave of missing dogs, people, and musical instruments may have something to do with The Owl’s Kiss. Comic Man shows Sam more secret messages hidden in commercial advertising.

Comic Man takes Sam to a hidden cubbyhole with a suite of secret surveillance cameras. Comic Man shows Sam a vintage box of Spacestones cereal with a map of the area on the back. Comic Man explains his belief that the map contains the key to everything he has been searching for if he can crack its code.

Sam visits his Bar Buddy. While Bar Buddy uses a drone to spy on a sad woman undressing, Sam voices his concern that someone may be following him.

Sam goes to Hollywood Forever Cemetery where there is an outdoor screening of an independent film. Sam spots two actresses from the film watching from a nearby tombstone with a man wearing a Native American headdress. After Sam introduces himself, the trio leaves in a vehicle with the pirate.

Sam eats the entire cookie he received at The Standard to gain admittance to the secret concert. Sam receives a Jesus and the Brides of Dracula record. Sam runs into Allen, who relays a rumor that a secret message is hidden within the band’s music.

Sam spots the Balloon Girl. Sam asks her about Sarah. Balloon Girl takes Sam to a subterranean bar where they dance until Sam gets sick from unknown drugs in the cookie. Balloon Girl vanishes. Sam spots Troy and tries chasing her, but falls unconscious in the cemetery.

Another phone call from his mother wakes Sam the next morning. Sam’s mom tells him she is sending Sam a VHS recording of the Janet Gaynor movie she mentioned previously. Sam sees that he passed out on top of Janet Gaynor’s grave.

Sam sees his ex-girlfriend’s billboard again. Sam and Bar Buddy discuss secret codes while playing Super Mario Bros. on NES.

Sam spots the two actresses from the cemetery in an ad for Shooting Star escort service. Sam calls one of the girls to his apartment. When she spots Sarah’s Polaroid on Sam’s refrigerator, the Shooting Star mentions seeing Sarah years ago at a party in a gated community owned by a legendary songwriter.

Sam decodes the Jesus and the Brides of Dracula song “Turning Teeth” to find the hidden message “rub Dean’s head and wait under Newton.” Sam goes to the Griffith Observatory where he rubs the bust of James Dean and then waits under a statue of Isaac Newton.

A dirty man in a paper crown appears and identifies himself as The Homeless King. The king blindfolds Sam before escorting him through Griffith Park to an underground tunnel. Along the way, the king tells Sam that if he ever finds himself alone with a coyote, he should follow it to see where it takes him. After being left alone in the tunnel, Sam explores what appears to be a furnished fallout shelter leading to a grocery store.

Sam goes to Comic Man’s house only to learn from a police officer that Comic Man supposedly committed suicide. Sam sneaks into the house. On footage recorded by the hidden surveillance cameras, Sam sees The Owl’s Kiss preparing to kill Comic Man in his bed. Sam takes the prized cereal box and leaves hurriedly.

Sam calls Allen to ask how he can get in touch with Jesus. Allen takes Sam to an outdoor chess party where Sam spots Balloon Girl and the two Shooting Stars among attendees.

Demanding to know about the secret message hidden in his music, Sam assaults Jesus in the bathroom at the party. Jesus explains that his record label forced him to record his three hits songs while insisting he not ask any questions. Jesus claims he only knows the songs’ true author as ‘The Songwriter.’

Sam asks the Shooting Star about the party she previously told him about. Balloon Girl and the two Shooting Stars escort Sam to a mansion where he confronts The Songwriter about the coded messages and bomb shelter. The Songwriter reveals he has written every hit song recorded for generations. The Songwriter cryptically taunts Sam by explaining that all of the artworks he has believed in for his entire life were artificial creations beyond his understanding, and their hidden messages are not meant for Sam. As their confrontation escalates, The Songwriter begins firing a gun at Sam. Sam uses Kurt Cobain’s guitar to beat The Songwriter to death.

The Owl’s Kiss infiltrates Sam’s apartment. Before she can attack, the building manager comes to the door with a sheriff to evict Sam. The sheriff decides to give Sam one more day.

Sam follows a coyote to a party where he runs into his ex-girlfriend, who introduces Sam to her new fiancé. Sam also spots Millicent Sevence, who points out a Janet Gaynor painting among the host home’s furnishings.

Sam tells Millicent that his friend was with her father when he died and Sam has been trying to find out what happened to her. Sam explains everything he uncovered as he and Millicent walk around the Silver Lake reservoir. While skinny-dipping in the water, Millicent passes Sam a metal bracelet taken from her father’s office that resembles the one Sam saw Sarah wearing. Sniper fire suddenly kills Millicent, whose death image resembles the Playboy magazine cover.

Sam connects numbers engraved on the bracelet to a chess board, a Legend of Zelda map in the first issue of Nintendo Power, and a map found inside Comic Man’s cereal box to reveal coordinates for a secret location. Sam goes to the location where he finds a hobo symbol identifying that the place is not safe.

Sam enters a small hut where he meets the mysterious ‘Final Man’ who is surrounded by Troy and her two friends. Sam explains everything he has discovered thus far and asks about Sarah.

Final Man explains that the bomb shelter Sam found is actually a tomb intended for “kings” such as Final Man and Jefferson Sevence. Final Man tells Sam that these exclusive locations are where the richest men in the world live for several months while they await ascension to another plane where they will be granted eternal life.

Final Man sets up a videophone for Sam to speak to Sarah in the underground bunker where she currently resides with Jefferson Sevence and two other women. Sarah confirms she is okay and chose to go the tomb of her own free will. Sarah also asks Sam if he will get another dog.

Sam passes out after drinking tea given to him by Final Man. When he recovers, Sam finds himself held captive by Homeless King. The king angrily demands to know why Sam had dog treats in his pocket. Sam tearfully explains that they were for his ex-girlfriend’s dog and he had been holding on to them with the hope that she would take him back. Homeless King releases Sam with an uncertain assertion that members of the conspiracy probably will not kill him. The king also tells Sam not to mention anything to anyone.

On his walk home, Sam sees a hamburger clown being painted over his ex-girlfriend’s billboard. Sam watches his mother’s Janet Gaynor movie before going next door to have sex with the topless bird woman. From his neighbor’s balcony, Sam sees the building manager and sheriff entering his apartment to evict him. Sam sees the double diamond symbol painted above his doorway.

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Review:

At a party shortly after screening the movie, I told a friend I had just seen “Under the Silver Lake.” Even though she seems generally clued into the genre cinema scene as much as any average film fan, she surprisingly hadn’t heard of it. She asked, “oh, what’s that?”

I thought a quick summation would easily roll off my tongue with immediacy. Instead, I found myself briefly stammering once or thrice as I clawed for succinct sentences.

“It’s from the guy who did ‘It Follows,’ (review here)” I reductively said, not unlike every other write-up glomming onto obvious details. “I really liked that,” my friend responded. I went on, “well, it’s a humorous mystery that puts some of that same macabre undercurrent in its mood, but it isn’t a horror film.” Thinking about the awkwardness of that statement, I correctively added, “actually, I don’t mean humorous as in funny. It’s not comedic so much as ‘quirky,’ like if Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers collaborated on a neo-noir crime thriller with a tongue tucked into its arthouse cheek.”

I’m not sure that assessment accurately encapsulates “Under the Silver Lake” either, although the entirety of that ordinary anecdote kind of does. Chatter concerning “Under the Silver Lake” is as likely to be about context as content. By that I mean viewers may find themselves in similar circumstances when discussing their personal experiences with the film.

One could describe “Under the Silver Lake” by its setup. You could technically say it’s “about” Sam, an unemployed slacker-type in a Jungle Hunt t-shirt sleepwalking his way through the slice of Los Angeles where 20/30-somethings struggle to stay afloat after Hollywood dreams have been cracked by nightmares of bill-collecting reality.

Sam’s conspiracy theory belief about pop culture overflowing with hidden messages meant for unidentified elites takes two sharp turns along his disjointed journey. The first comes when he reads an underground zine called “Under the Silver Lake.” This Crumb-like comic tells tall tales about a mythological woman murdering men while wearing an owl mask, a failed silent film star who put a pox on the community, and a current connection to a dog killer running rampant in the area.

The second comes when Sam meets enigmatic new neighbor Sarah. The two take a mutual interest in one another, but their would-be romance ends as suddenly as it begins. Sarah vanishes without a trace in the middle of the night, leaving an empty apartment and confused Sam in her wake. Sam’s subsequent quest to uncover what happened to the shiny new object of his affection takes him down a twisty trail of trendy clubs, classic movies, distractions during casual sex, skunk spray, car-keying kid vandals, cereal box ciphers, magazine maps, moguls disguised as pirates, weirdos, beardos, and countless pensive ponderings.

Yes, “Under the Silver Lake” is every bit as eccentrically eclectic as it sounds. Except it’s not meant to be digested as a linearly logical movie. To dissect the movie’s substance using its tangible story misses the intangible bigger picture.

“Under the Silver Lake” should come with an “extreme polarization” warning, which it sort of inherently does since David Robert Mitchell directs under A24’s distribution banner. Cue the eye-rolling assaults certain to include words like “pretentious, hipster, millennial, edgelord, smug, narcissistic,” or whatever other terms du jour are fashionable among artistically superior armchair intellectuals.

You see, “Under the Silver Lake” is far more likely to be talked about in hot takes, lukewarm takes, contrarian takes, and lemming takes than in straight plot synopses. It’s a cocktail party conversation starter, which speaks to the reason why this “review” focuses on “this is what it’s like” generalizations instead of traditional critiques. I’m not the ideal guide for breaking through the movie’s obliquely interpretive material. I’d rather draft a vague map for people to route what they’re getting into while gauging how likely they are to connect with the film’s cynical commentary.

My objectivity also becomes compromised by the fact that I’ve been a Silver Lake resident since 2016. Whether that’s long enough or too short of a time, from where I’m standing, David Robert Mitchell nails the tone of the town. The novelty layer of “I know that bar/place/street” obviously only appeals to several thousand people. Beyond that though, “Under the Silver Lake” smartly skewers the absurdity of secret shows, chic social scenes, and inflated cults of personality through savvy metaphors for stalking, surveillance, celebrity, and complacency. Self-aware parody remains in play even when the movie appears to obliviously celebrate the elevated ennui of connected media culture mixed with gumshoe drama against a backdrop of vintage Hollywood glamour.

From an early “Magnolia” moment when a squirrel drops from the sky to die on a concrete sidewalk like a wounded Normandy Beach soldier, you know “Under the Silver Lake” fearlessly aims to be unconventionally appealing. It succeeds through the power of personable performances, particularly Andrew Garfield’s, whose plentiful tics of affability stall Sam’s meandering malaise before it can fully seize readily available opportunities to become wholly off-putting.

I won’t argue against anyone staking an annoyed claim that David Robert Mitchell knowingly trolls wannabe cinephiles who hailed him as a wunderkind by presenting a nonsensical stream of consciousness as artful entertainment. Maybe he does. Yet whenever I reflect on the unusual appeal of its mesmeric allure, the more I appreciate “Under the Silver Lake” as a unique travelogue through a weird waking dreamscape.

Perhaps the preceding words hold little value as an insightful evaluation of the movie’s merits. I may not have the movie’s cryptic messages solved either, assuming they aren’t in fact deviously devised goose chases. At the very least I can confirm that I was excited to write about “Under the Silver Lake” at a time when the monotony of many movies has routinely bored me with run of the mill repetition.

The strange nature of the film ensures viewers are certain to exit at different destinations. But the jolting, jocund jaunt to get there is just as certain to guarantee an unforgettable trip through L.A.’s underbelly of off-centered oddness.

Review Score: 80

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