When the horror film You Don’t Run came out three years ago, it was surprisingly not just another routine teenage murder, but a layered penetration into the world of teenagers, wrapped in genre templates. The overseas community was not so shocked, as David Robert Mitchell had already established himself there as a talented independent filmmaker. Now it comes with a hard-to-categorize brainwash that, despite several childhood illnesses, offers a truly unique spectacle. we will explore The Silver Lake Mystery Movie here.
In my review of You Don’t Escape, I advised Mitchell to use the services of a more experienced screenwriter than himself next time. Mitchell didn’t listen to me (I daresay he didn’t even read it), but I won’t blame him. The Silver Lake mystery only uses the story as a framework to pitch burning ideas and tons of pop culture references, which the skilled indie clearly enjoys.
In the center of the action is Andrew Garfield, an ambiguous character, balancing somewhere between white trash and standard disaffected millennial. He is threatened with execution, but he doesn’t really care, preferring to voyeuristically observe his surroundings and look for conspiratorial interpretations in pop culture products. He lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and this neighborhood, located under the famous Hollywood sign, actually represents another main character in the story. Riches and poverty, nobility and false tinsel, all this provides a fascinating space to create stories on the border between social drama and horror.
A noir framework in which Garfield (whom I’ve already seen thanks to Hacksaw Ridgetook to his mercy and this time he manages to pull the film off perfectly) is looking for a mysterious femme fatale, played by the truly beautiful Riley Keough, is really just an excuse for a trip through Mitchell’s artistically torn soul, where nerdy conspiracy theories are mixed with pop hits, the golden age of Hollywood and an urban symphony singing life in the glare of Los Angeles fame.
The result is so overcrowded with ideas, references and motifs that one wonders if it would be possible to create an entire series on such a basis. So the comparison to Mulholland Drive is probably the closest you’ll get, and if that fact alone is enough to make you happy, run to the cinema. We certainly don’t have a plethora of similar projects that would combine the American independent nineties with surreal narrative darkness. Personally, I appreciated the fresh interplay of subverting and confirming stereotypes, and I enjoyed Mitchell’s unpredictable ride.
The film is promoted through words like a hallucinogenic, hypnotic trip. However, there is no need to be afraid of too much art, because the individual scenes oscillate between dark comedy and bizarre thriller. The genre and thematic mix, which the dog and the cat in one person embarked on, thus maintains a fairly uniform face and mood throughout the footage; once you get to grips with the rules of this obscure game, you’ll be enjoying it for nearly two and a half hours. Such regularity in tempo is especially important for such a long work and also unusual – it is not an easy task. Mitchell nailed it though and I’ll be really looking forward to anything else from him.
Also, Read On Fmovies