Under the Silver Lake: DVD Review

Arriving on Blu-ray and DVD this week is writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s odd dramatic-comedy-mystery, “Under the Silver Lake”, starring Andrew Garfield. As a fan of Mitchell’s 2014 horror film, “It Follows”, I was curious about what he would cook-up next. Now l am fully aware that “Silver Lake” has its share of fans. With a film this oddly original, it’s hard not to respect Mitchell’s ambitious vision. However, I just couldn’t get on board with what he was putting out there.

The story centers on Sam (Garfield), a broke young man, on the verge of eviction, who becomes instantly infatuated with his new neighbor Sarah (Riley Keough). When she suddenly disappears without a trace, Sam’s main focus is to find out what happened to her.  This leads him to various strange locations around the Los Angeles.

“Under the Silver Lake” is most interesting when Sam encounters the numerous unique individuals that could know what happened to Sarah or at least point him in the right direction. Unfortunately, Mitchell seems to care more about his styles than telling an interesting story. What makes things even more difficult is that “Silver Lake” runs for nearly 140 mind-numbing minutes. This would have been difficult to handle with a run-time of half that. There are signs of genius in “Silver Lake”, but in the end, they didn’t help me enjoy it.

By: Marc Ferman