I never did see Nightcrawler (2014), the first, much heralded collab between writer/director Dan Gilroy and star Jake Gylenhaal. I just never found the time for it.
If it is anything like Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), maybe I'll just give it a permanent pass.
I. What Is It?
This is the story of art. And people who critique art. And people who buy art. And how they all get murdered by HAUNTED art.II. Not Enough of Any Thing it Tries to Be
The single greatest critique that I can muster for this film is that it is never enough of any of the things that it tries to be. And it tries to be a lot of things
Is it a biting critique of the art world? Yeah, sometimes, but never enough. What does this film say about art critics? It says that they are all vainglorious assholes. As if we haven't seen these ideas presented thousands of times better before.
Is it a schlock-ey B-movie romp? Yeah, sometimes, but never enough. It undermines its own sense of fun by trying to be Very Serious. About... art, and shit.
Is it a horror movie? Yeah, sometimes, but it's never really very scary. It undermines its own attempts at horror with aborted comedy and silliness. Marco Beltrami's weird-as-fuck score doesn't do the film any favors and never manages tonal consistency.
Is it a haunting ghost story? Yeah, for a bit. Jake Gylenhaal's character begins an investigation into the late artist responsible for all of this haunted artwork, but, as soon as we get a few lengthy monologues of exposition, the plot is dropped and nothing ever comes from it. Who was this guy? Why is his art haunted? How do you "beat" the evil? A particular tragedy is that the film establishes that the artist used his own flesh and blood mixed into his paint. Do you know what the film does with that badass bit of information? It just mentions it. And then moves on.
The truly frustrating thing is that this movie DOES have brief flashes of brilliance. Gylenhaal's caustic art critic is a lot of fun, and he is game, as are most of the ensemble (although the film wastes a John Malkovich who seems to be begging to get let off the leash). There are some deliciously absurd deaths involving strange art, including the titular velvet buzzsaw. But the film never establishes consistency, and squanders an incredible premise on a bloated, easy-to-fix script.
Is it a biting critique of the art world? Yeah, sometimes, but never enough. What does this film say about art critics? It says that they are all vainglorious assholes. As if we haven't seen these ideas presented thousands of times better before.
Is it a schlock-ey B-movie romp? Yeah, sometimes, but never enough. It undermines its own sense of fun by trying to be Very Serious. About... art, and shit.
Is it a horror movie? Yeah, sometimes, but it's never really very scary. It undermines its own attempts at horror with aborted comedy and silliness. Marco Beltrami's weird-as-fuck score doesn't do the film any favors and never manages tonal consistency.
Is it a haunting ghost story? Yeah, for a bit. Jake Gylenhaal's character begins an investigation into the late artist responsible for all of this haunted artwork, but, as soon as we get a few lengthy monologues of exposition, the plot is dropped and nothing ever comes from it. Who was this guy? Why is his art haunted? How do you "beat" the evil? A particular tragedy is that the film establishes that the artist used his own flesh and blood mixed into his paint. Do you know what the film does with that badass bit of information? It just mentions it. And then moves on.
The truly frustrating thing is that this movie DOES have brief flashes of brilliance. Gylenhaal's caustic art critic is a lot of fun, and he is game, as are most of the ensemble (although the film wastes a John Malkovich who seems to be begging to get let off the leash). There are some deliciously absurd deaths involving strange art, including the titular velvet buzzsaw. But the film never establishes consistency, and squanders an incredible premise on a bloated, easy-to-fix script.
III. Too Fucking Long
This movie is 113 minutes long. It feels every damn second of its length. It has a lugubrious pace and seems to hamstring itself every time it even begins to pick up narrative steam. Oh, this man is murdered by manipulative paintings? Well, it's time to go off on a tangent about how empty and vapid art dealers are. Oh, one of those empty and vapid art dealers is ALSO murdered by art? Well, it's time to talk about an affair (that happens off screen), or a nasty breakup (that happens offscreen) or art collectives (you guessed it: also offscreen). By the time the movie finally seems really interested in killing off its protagonists, all of them, it was far too late to have any kind of fun in it.
This movie has a million characters and each of those characters come with their own shitty side plots. Trim the fat, goddammit. The film feels like massive cuts were made, but they were all the wrong cuts. Instead of slicing off wasteful monologues, or lingering sequences, they cut out character moments and bits of conflict. What we are left with is a movie that is constantly telling us what it is about, but never really BEING ABOUT THAT THING. And that's insulting.
This movie could have been lean, mean, and ridiculous. Instead it becomes bloated, boring and suffers from all of the pretensions it shakes its fist at in the art world.
This movie has a million characters and each of those characters come with their own shitty side plots. Trim the fat, goddammit. The film feels like massive cuts were made, but they were all the wrong cuts. Instead of slicing off wasteful monologues, or lingering sequences, they cut out character moments and bits of conflict. What we are left with is a movie that is constantly telling us what it is about, but never really BEING ABOUT THAT THING. And that's insulting.
This movie could have been lean, mean, and ridiculous. Instead it becomes bloated, boring and suffers from all of the pretensions it shakes its fist at in the art world.
IV. Unlikeable People
The problem with writing a movie filled with irredeemable characters who are all selfish shits, is that the audience doesn't care about them. The characters in this movie don't even have the decency to be epic-level villains: they are just shits. And the film treats their deaths as some kind of comeuppance. It is unearned. I neither hated them enough to root for their murder, nor cared enough about them as human beings to hope that they'd triumph and escape with their lives.
V. Should You See It?
In fact, if you're looking for thought-provoking, artistically conceived horror, just go see Us (2019).
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