Let me preface this by saying I was very excited for this movie. I'm into mysteries, I'm into noir, I'm into giallo, I'm into people making things that are ambitious and unpredictable, I'm a sucker for Riley Keough, and I was a pretty big fan of IT FOLLOWS. But, I never could have imagined this...

With this film, David Robert Mitchell has basically solidified his position as the world's new Richard Kelly. IT FOLLOWS was his DONNIE DARKO, and THIS is his SOUTHLAND TALES. Southland Tales is the ONLY movie that I find this truly comparable to.

First, it's strengths: it is astronomically ambitious, unpredictable, and it will go WAY out of it's way to try to be weird. You have to give anyone who is willing to go THAT FAR out on a limb a little bit of credit. But, aside from that, the casting of a few extremely good looking people, and the desire you'll probably feel to continue observing this 2 hour and 20 minute freakshow just to see if the train wreck can get any uglier, the positives end there.

Now, let's just talk about the most painful parts: Garfield's character is impossible to take seriously the majority of the time. His portrayal of a smelly (people bring up how horrible he smells literally every 5 minutes throughout the film) timid weirdo is awkward in the wrong way - reminds me of Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook - you're trying to be a weirdo but it's not working - I see acting, I see trying. Then, he transforms into the Terminator in some really out-of-place sequences that would be really cool if they didn't make such little sense in their placement. Second, this is a movie about Los Angeles that feels like it was made by someone who only knows as much as tourists know about Los Angeles. The locations are all the most cliche L.A. staples, which serve their purpose, but the majority of the characters feel like ignorant caricatures of what outsiders think L.A. people are like: yoga hippies, music producers, prostitutes, but all depthless interpretations with no inspiration - there is one specific "L.A. party" sequence on a downtown rooftop full of bland L.A. actors trying to portray eccentric L.A. people and it's so off base it feels like a rejected Target commercial.

It's clear that this movie wants to be Mulholland Drive, but it lacks the conceptual focus, the effective dreamlike surrealism, and the palpable creativity that make that film so masterful. The "homeless king" clearly wishes he was "the mysterious cowboy", but he's not - his crown looks way too cheap. Under The Silver Lake is full of "totally random" characters, scenarios, and cryptic "clues" that eventually tie into EACH OTHER, but still leave you feeling like they all served no plausible purpose in the end, like connecting a bunch of effects pedals with coupler cables but then having no batteries or AC adapter to power them up with.

I was kind of surprised by this movie experience. I just came back from sneak preview and the movie still lingers in my mind. I love Andrew Garfield, his performance was believable and I think he's one one of the best rising stars of Hollywood. I also loved his work in "Breathe", great movie, make sure you check it out.

The storyline is a bit weird, and it's pretty much centered around Andrews character, so the movie felt a bit small to me, but Andrew performance makes up for it big time. I also loved the nudity in this movie. I would describe this movie as playful, curious, funny and authentic. This is not the usual Hollywood crap, it's quite different, I had no idea where the story was going, which is a good thing because it kept me hooked and that doesn't happen to me very often anymore. I truly had a great time. It's not for everyone I think but if you like semi thriller/detective/humor/absurdity kind of movies, we'll get yourself a bucket of popcorn and have fun!

(English is not my native language)

This is one of the most pretentious, pointless, boring movies in recent years. I am sure some people will rave about it but let me tell you from the avarage movie lover person, this was a two and half hours torture. It tells the story of an unlikable guy who is very annoying and somewhat violent, obsessed with his neighbor to the point that she disappears and he is obssessed with finding her. All the while there are strange dreams, cult story, subliminal messages in songs and boring, not even innovative, conspiracies. Yawn. The ending too will not save this hot mess of a script, since no reaolution will be delieved. The only good thing about this film was the filmographie, beautiful and masterfully shot. Sadly, not remotely enough to provide redemption.

Under the Silver Lake is the third feature film of upcoming director David Robert Mitchell. Mitchell already established his skills in creating atmospheric movies with 2014's It Follows: a clear homage to 80's horror films. And with his new movie it's obvious that he dared to drift even further from the classic hollywood style of filmmaking.

Under the Silver Lake is not an easy movie to digest and will probably not be appreciated by the general public, nor does it need to be. It's clear that Mitchell creates movies out of passion (as the best directors do), and after the success of It Follows he became more bold and as a result was able to create a truely bizzare piece of cinema that reminds us of movies like Enemy (Denis Villeneuve), Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly) and the most obvious: Mullholland Drive (David Lynch).

Sam is a lonely, miserable and in the end quite unlikable guy living in L.A. After a neighbour girl who he became enamoured with dissapears, Sam becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. The search for the truth reveals more and more weird secrets along the way. Including the disappearance of furniture, a dog killer and hidden messages in the media. If you're looking for a movie with an easy plot that will give you all the answers in the end, this movie isn't for you. Many of the plot elements don't get resolved or explained, but when looking at the movie as a whole, this is not a problem. In my humble opinion it just adds tot he overal weirdness and atmosphere of paranoia that the movie is meant to give way to.

By far the most striking element of this movie is, however, the unique style. The cinematography has some expertly used neo-noir elements, adding to the detective atmosphere of the movie. Furthermore, it's obvious that Mitchell is selective in the shots being used in the movie. Only a minimal amount of shots are used to tell the tale, leading to a very clean-cut look. The movie has some unique camera movements but those are sparsely used as well, contrasting strongly with the otherwise simple camerawork. Because of this, those special camera movements stand out more and really serve their purpose. The use of music and sound elements is also quite striking: in particular the use of mickey mousing, to often compliment the previously mentioned unique camerawork.

Overal Under the Silver Lake is a beautiful piece of cinema that might not be what the average film goer is looking for, but cinephiles will probably appreciate for it's distinct uniqueness and surprisingly well mashed up uses of different stylistic choices.

I came in with no idea what to expect, and was really pleasently suprised! The movie had a great classic hollywood style score, mixed with a retro-modern visual style and a mysterious dark ambience. The plot was servicable enough, and Andrew Garfield was very charming and funny. There was a lot of nudity and some snippets of gory visuals, but nothing exessive (exept for one scene maybe). I'd defenitely recommend it!

Think of Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, David Lynch's Mulholland Dr, Brett Ellis's Rules of Attraction and you might get a feel as to what you'll find in this title...

This film ceratinly isn't for everyone! Surreal undertones, obscure scenes and some controversial storytelling which'll push it in cult status in years to come. The film also touches onto the classic Noir genre of the 1950's and does it very well. Perfomances from actors are great and engaging and the strange storline really pulled me in. Its definitely a journey well worth the duration if you're into something totally different to the generic releases being pushed into the mainstream these days!

9.5/10 a brilliant film

The main reason I watched this movie is because of the trailer and the over-enthousiastly written revieuws I read in a paper. It felt promissing.

So I went see it: first it feels like a comedic parody on old detective noir films, then suddenly it becomes a horror-thriller, then a scene full on comedy, then detective noir again - yet this time it doesn't feel like a parody, then it becomes horror again... and so on... To put it short: the picture seems not able to decide what it wants to be. Some might call it an experimental mix of genres, yet it felt more like indecisiveness to me.

The individual scenes are good, not great, but good. The complete film just couldn't win me over.

Furthermore I am kind of pissed of about the plot (don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything). The movie introduces dozens of plot-points throughout the whole, but only ties together a couple of these in the end. So I felt like it needed more to have a satisfying end - despite its allready outrageous runtime!

Anyways, 4 stars nontheless. Love you Andrew...

Redeeming qualities are the references to pop culture and other movie Icons like Hitchcock or Alice in Wonderland. It felt like this movie could be split into pieces which made for weird but funny and artsy shorts. But for a movie it felt like it was all over the place whitch made me impatient as to get to a point or keep track of any plotline. I do mind nudity but I got the feeling that feminism was set back a lot of years in terms of women just being used as beautiful prop or 'damsel in distress' that could only be desired or have any significant part, plus the male figures where, as usual more clothed. And a stereotypically white boy child (owns an appartment and car way above paygrade or job ). However the actor playes it well. A lot of scenes were too long and vague and could've been cut. Why the many parties (time stalling to me)? Liked the detective part, but also failed to be a strong plotline. Even the part about the Owl's kiss, was cut too short (didn't feel like it would end). Even the humorous bits could be more extreme. Be all out or not at all I would say and pick a plotline, stick to it or explain what it adds to the plot for people who do not know of all references visually.

This is the only review you will need to read. This "movie" was made to satisfy and stroke the egos of all involved in its making. There can be no other reason or excuse for this kaleidoscope of mismatched and incoherent ideas and random thoughts. Any ratings above a 5 are surely posted by cast and crew or lonely, pretentious art-house students with nothing better to do after a hard day at school trying to decipher the collective works of David Lynch. To be clear, this movie makes absolutely no sense and has you continuously asking yourself, what, when, where, who, but mostly, why. Be forewarned; there are absolutely no answers. And to top it off, we are held hostage for almost two and a half excruciating hours, squirming uncomfortably as we continuously wrestle with thoughts of just cutting our losses and turning off our TV never to speak of this again. With that said, if you still insist on watching, don't say I didn't warn you and, think of me when the credits are rolling.

A Mulholland Drive wannabe that misses gets last in too many plots holes, tangents leading to nowhere, and umbelievable set-ups/scenes. Tension. Repetition. Eviction. Propulsion. Skunks sprays. Coyotes and strays. And owl that slays. Shooting star lays. A balloon girl's gangly ways. The whole thing just doesn't play. And neither should you.

So amateurish in it's efforts to be cool that it devolves into one badly realized concept after another. I can hear the film makers saying "but you don't get it" and I agree as an audience member and neither does your audience which is kind of the thing with film. When you can't connect with your audience you've made an installation piece at a moving image museum, not a movie. Andrew Garfield should get back into that spider man suit as soon as possible because this isn't a career move by any stretch of the imagination. If you want to witness a slow drowning on film or are contemplating a bad film choice you've come to the right place in Under The Silver Lake.

If I could travel back in time to tell whom ever was in charge of making this picture to save their money,time and resources, I would, but somehow I think they wouldn't listen to me from what I've witnessed. Someone thought this was a cool, new, interesting and original film. Unfortunately it was probably the core group of film makers that got behind it and no one else. 2 hours and 19 minutes of bad, and I mean real bad movie in this one. Feels like an over ambitious student film financed by a trust fund that could have been used for anything other then this, literally anything else.

I watched 2 movies this week and one was confusing as the other .the other goes by the name of possum.wouldnt 'recommend either unless your into the David lynch weird stuff

So we follow Andrew which whose life changes after he finds a strange, bewitching girl in his pool. Then she disappears from the neighbourhood and he starts to look for her everywhere, which brings him in a lot of weird, fancy, secret LA parties. Meanwhile, he is also interested in some weird comic book telling the stories of urban legends like a guy obsessed by killing dogs, and he also starts to decrypt secret codes from pop songs, because all pop songs contains secret codes. Feeling lost yet ? This is just the beginning.

So this is a 2-hours-long random voyage of this lazy guy trying to find this girl in LA for absolutely no reason (he likes her ass though), and it serves as a pretext for creating tons of clip-based visuals, which are nice, but as you may expect, make no sense at all.

He finds himself hiking in the back of the Hollywood sign, finding some cult where people bury themselves in a bunker-styled house for six months before hoping to be elected in an elevated life. And you remember the killing dog thing ? Just kiding, there is no relation whatsoever. Oh, did I mention the masked vampire who kill some guys in their sleep ? Again, no relation, no purpose. Just a fantasy added, like you put some sugar on a disgusting cake.

But you know, there is always someone naive enough to try to find the metaphorical, artsy meaning in all of this, so why not play the pretentious card and end up in Cannes festival ? Whatever works !

I just forgot ! He likes to bang his old hillbilly neighbour sometimes. Quite a piece of writing, right ?

The music is unbearable. Actually it's quite normal as it brings a mystery tone, but it just used all the time. After one hour, I swear to God I could put the whole orchestra on fire. I never saw music used so badly. Thinking that is some hommage to Hitchcock (quite obvious plagiarism, I mean inspiration, and Vertigo poster is present in Andrew's bedroom.

Long story short, this movie could have been great. In the middle I thought : "My god, so much mysteries involved ! The ending must be an incredible climax ! " There is no ending. Nothing is resolved. You will have no answers. Why respecting the spectator when you can just pretend he needs to elaborate by himself ? Nothing to elaborate here, this is just a bad joke. You pretended to be Hitchcock with your crappy Vertigo effects, you pretended to be Terrence Malick with your failed contemplative atmosphere, you attempted to be Quentin Dupieux and create an cinematic UFO, but you have just no clue what you're doing, don't you.

Good visuals, horrible writing. It's just a mess. Don't bother.

Outstanding. The vibe, the acting, the music, everything. I wouldnt of even been mad if it was longer.

You will not be able to get your 2:19:24 second back. I had high hopes too.

Besides the obvious thriller-mystery-comedy style, I think this movie is more than that. It is about something that is explicitly mentioned: what if pop culture is just a vehicle to manipulate us, to alienate us, to keep us controlled and happy, not facing and fighting against the inequalities and the injustices? I think this movie is also about the present day youth, about the shallowness, about hedonism, about crazy conspiracy theories, about emptiness, about mythomania (yes, we all know that even rock stars are humans like we are, but we had never seen it so graphically, in such grotesque and so unpleasant way), about the rampant consume (Sam consumes girls. He "falls in love" with every girl he meets. He is not in love with Sarah, he is infatuated with her. Sarah is just a whim. He has to posses her, to consume her). A lot of things in a surrealistic and hypnotic wrap.

I love mystery and declassified movies , though most of them are not based on true stories , but their plots are based on real lifes .

This movie however does have very mysterious story indeed , but the plot is awfully false . Not only way too far from reality , but also absurd plots will make you painful to keep watching .

From beginning to the end , this movie successfully turn to fantasy and Sci-Fi from mystery , have to say , it's ridiculous for David Robert Mitchell to make this movie .

I was a child of the 60's, survived & I have watched 100"s of movies. This film is what happens when you legalize drugs and say have at it to a bunch of mindless, high, future academy award winner writers, directors & actors. So grab and "USE" your "LSD", "POT" or other mind altering drugs and you will probably enjoy this worthless dribble. Because that is what it will take to watch 02:19:34 of absolutely the worse piece of film making I have ever seen except for maybe, "How to talk to girls at parties".

Want entertainment? Want to see meet some terrifically enthralling characters and see what great writing can create? Yes? Well, then . . .watch some Game of Thrones clips on YouTube. Or maybe that Brit series "MisFits." Now . . . that's entertainment.

This Andy Garfield in Hollyweird movie is a mish-mosh of "let's see if we can make this more 'out there' by introducing yet another strange character" crap. Yawn. How 'bout making some kind of sense at times, rather than compounding the silliness?

As a native Californian I resent the Hollywood sign, James Dean's head and Gladwin Planetarium being misused and abused in this film. Show some respect.

If you like pert and semi-pert boobies and really sweet, high-toned asses (men and women) you will LOVE this movie. Truly, the nudity is the best part. That and the one scene where (I knew it!) the "special" guitar belongs to Kurt Cobain. I liked that scene because I felt so smart when I said to myself, "Yeah. I bet that's Cobain's guitar." (You know a movie is trite and in trouble if I can predict the big surprise.)

Ugh. Andy Garfield is handsome, but he's not such a pretty boy that he can crash a ton of Hollywood parties wearing filthy, torn clothes (or his jammies) and smelling of skunkus------and no one seems to take notice. Or else they pretend they don't know what skunk smells like. They're in L.A. for Pete's sake. Everyone knows that smell. What THE HELL was that line, "I like your T-shirt." ?? Stupid writing, sad plot line.

The only real saving grace was seeing Topher Grace and that guy from Breakout Kings.

Oh. And the ending is completely lame. What the heck WAS that parrot saying? We'll never know. Do we care? (My vote was he was saying "shredder.")

If anyone had asked me exactly one year ago about my most anticipated movie of 2018, I probably would have answered David Robert Mitchell's "Under the Silver Lake". He directed one of my favorite horror films of this decade so far ("It Follows"), and this film stars Andrew Garfield, one of my favorite actors of his generation. What could possibly have gone wrong?

Well, just like it's the case with many other directors who came up with an immense hit for their first major film, Mitchell also struggled to come up with an equivalent amount of quality for his next feature film. It's not like his talent has vanished altogether; his style was even more prevalent in "Under the Silver Lake" and I absolutely fell in love with the directing, the atmosphere and his unmissable attention to details. However - and I don't like to write "however" in a review of a film I was so ready to love - all this doesn't help if the film a) has no plot whatsoever or b) has nothing to say whatsoever. And in this film, a) and b) were actually combined. It was really hard to follow the movie through its random segments, its messy, scrambled fragments and all the meaningless sex scenes. I am no prude at all, but throughout the first half of the film, to roughly 50% I was basically watching porn. There was so much room for scenes to be left on the cutting floor: there really wasn't any reason for "Under the Silver Lake" to be 140 minutes long.

The basic plot revolves around a vanished girl and a young, aimless man's quest to solve the mystery of her disappearance. (Some spoilers ahead.) I wouldn't have minded the lack of a resolution if the ending had been left somewhat ambiguous. But it wasn't, it was all explained, and absolutely none of it made ANY sense at all. I'm pretty sure the writers must have been on drugs, because there was no other way to come up with something so weird, senseless and dull. (End of possible spoilers.)

Frankly, the movie never became boring; there was always something to catch your interest. But the restless hope that all the scattered scenes would ultimately be woven together and suddenly all make sense again wasn't fulfilled. We were just left hanging in the air in the end, which is exactly what disappointed me so much. That doesn't mean, however, that I didn't also enjoy this film for what it was worth. The directing was exceptional and perhaps even better than in "It Follows". The cinematography by Mike Gioulakis is one of the best I have seen throughout the entire year. I loved the neo-noir atmosphere and the attention to all the classics of film history, from "How to Marry a Millionaire" over "A Farewell to Arms" to Hitchcock's classics (when in fact, the entire film could also work as a single homage to Hitchcock's works, especially the car chase scene which was obviously inspired by "Psycho", and the setting which was obviously inspired by "Rear Window"). The score was amazing and another great aspect about the film. The acting was also pretty solid, with Andrew Garfield being the obvious stand-out.

Overall, I can't say I didn't enjoy "Under the Silver Lake"; I had been anticipating to watch it for a long time and was more than excited when it was finally released to German cinemas. Watching it in a cinema only enhanced the experience from a technical view-point, as the visual as well as the sound-technical work were some of the best I have seen this entire year, but the lack of a better screenplay cannot be replaced by the benefits of great technical work alone, and so I can't help but feel like this was a disappointment. My only hope is that David Robert Mitchell's next work will be more coherent and a return to form again, because he certainly has the potential and the talent for more.

Sometimes people thinks they are artistic and that their concepts are amazing and that they'll receive praise because of this. In this movie, it's not.

You're using the people as guinea pigs to see how your "art" will be taken but people's time are wasted.

Stop making crappy films.

A film with no sense and soul. Director burnt his prestige at Garfield's service. Smelt bad like a ...

This film needed a longer incubation period or a pass from production because it's sooo Bad. Pure garbage and ridiculous in every way. There's a hipster pirate in it or better yet, a hipsters idea of a modern day pirate. So, so bad.

If you enjoy alternative (some may say pretentious) foreign movies - the movies of Anders Thomas Jensen (Men & Chicken, Green Butchers etc), Alex van Warmerdam (Borgman) or Jens Lien (The bothersome man) - then I think this movie is for you. I certainly won't suggest it for everyone, but it was a phenomenal piece of filmmaking from Mitchell.

So pleased to not have taken the negative reviews seriously. I tend to only watch movies 6 and above, but with all the fake reviews... sometimes it's really difficult to make the right choice. In times of a surplus of options and diminshing attention spans, making a good movie choice has almost become a life skill. So we head to user reviews.

Had I have read a couple of the negative reviews before watching, I would have certainly given this film a miss. Very fortunate of me to not have. There are so many negative reviews scoring this film a 0 or 1 that it would have been hard not be dubious. That's where I suppose the lesson comes in. This is obviously not a movie for everyone. It's esoteric, layered, nonsensical, funny, dark, absurd, confisusing, detatched and unpredictable. But in my humble opinion... a work of film making genius.