Under the Silver Lake ★★★☆☆
If you’ve ever wanted to see a paranoid conspiracy unravel through the eyes of a disillusioned millennial, “Under the Silver Lake” is the bizarre treasure hunt for you. David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to It Follows trades in horror for a neo-noir fever dream, but it’s less “Chinatown” and more “Inherent Vice” for the Instagram generation—if that generation also loved decoding cereal box puzzles while listening to REM.
Andrew Garfield plays Sam, an LA slacker who’s about as emotionally grounded as a helium balloon. When his enigmatic neighbor Sarah (Riley Keough) vanishes after one night of poolside flirting, Sam embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles. Naturally, this quest spirals into a web of hidden messages, Hollywood oddities, and secret societies. If that sounds straightforward, let me assure you—this film is anything but.
At its heart, Under the Silver Lake skewers the pervasive sense of meaninglessness in modern life, particularly through the lens of media obsession. Mitchell pokes fun at our collective conspiracy-fueled culture, where every billboard, song, and issue of Nintendo Power might hold the secret to the universe—or, more likely, to someone’s descent into madness. It’s a biting commentary on the vapid pursuit of meaning in a world that seems to have lost its own. Yet, for all its attempts at deconstructing culture, the film itself can’t resist indulging in the very tropes it critiques—particularly when it comes to how it treats women. They are reduced to cryptic symbols in Sam’s personal maze, an irony the film seems to notice but not quite solve.
Mitchell crafts a hazy, seductive Los Angeles, drenched in sun and shadow, with an aesthetic reminiscent of Mulholland Drive and the golden age of Hollywood. The dreamlike cinematography, paired with a moody score by Disasterpeace, sets the stage for this strange trip. However, much like its protagonist, the visuals sometimes wander off into incoherence. Sam may be chasing clues, but the film itself occasionally feels lost in its own rabbit holes of cryptic imagery and pop culture nods, which makes it as frustrating as it is alluring.
Andrew Garfield’s Sam is equal parts charming and pathetic, a perfect cipher for a man obsessed with his own insignificance. He nails the slacker persona—equal parts wit and bewilderment—as he tumbles deeper into this surreal landscape. Garfield keeps you hooked, even when you want to slap some sense into Sam. Riley Keough, playing the mysterious Sarah, is magnetic, even though the film’s women feel more like noir set pieces than fully fleshed-out characters. Topher Grace makes an amusing appearance as Sam’s equally checked-out friend, though most of the cast exists to propel Sam through his half-baked, half-serious scavenger hunt.
Here’s where things get tricky. The movie lurches between moments of brilliance and tedious stretches of cryptic nonsense. It’s not so much a plot as a meandering series of bizarre episodes. If you find Sam’s journey compelling, you’ll roll with the film’s slack pacing. If not, well, you might start to feel like you’ve been trapped in an LA traffic jam for two hours. The third act spirals into outright absurdity, leaving many threads dangling—and not in a satisfying, thought-provoking way, but more like a TV show that got canceled mid-season.
Watching Under the Silver Lake feels a bit like trying to decipher one of those Magic Eye posters—you either see something profound, or it’s just a bunch of squiggles. For anyone who’s lived in or around LA, the film feels like a twisted love letter to the city’s many myths, from the hidden corners of Hollywood to the elusive promises of fame and fortune. As someone who’s dabbled in my own conspiracy theories (what was in that McDonald’s special sauce, anyway?), I found myself both entertained and exasperated by Sam’s unraveling. It’s an apt metaphor for modern disillusionment: we’re all looking for answers, but sometimes there’s just nothing there.
Under the Silver Lake is not for everyone. If you like your mysteries neatly tied up, you’ll leave frustrated. But for those who revel in the strange, the surreal, and the slightly pretentious, this movie is an engaging—if flawed—journey. It’s not quite the next Big Lebowski, but it sure tries to be. In the end, Under the Silver Lake doesn’t have all the answers, but maybe that’s the point.
