In a magnificent turn from the director of It Follows, this neo-noir comedy thriller is as enigmatic, ambiguous, and downright infuriating as movies can come. Where his previous flick was a streamlined, hyper-simplistic jolt of horror, David Robert Mitchell's latest is a sprawling, endlessly complex assault on the mind. Think Mulholland Drive meets Inherent Vice, and you'll start to approach where this film gets its kicks. But Under the Silver Lake is a wholly unique experience, one whose plot, visuals, and design are made to at once stun, terrify, and mock you.
Sam (Andrew Garfield) is a mess. Jobless, aimless, but utterly likable, he spends his time investigating conspiracy theories and studying minutiae of pop culture for secret coded messages. For example, he studies every episode of Wheel of Fortune to analyze each of Vanna White's eye movements, certain there's a pattern and therefore hidden meaning. When he befriends his new neighbor -- who caught him spying on her -- and she disappears the next day, he embarks on a detective mystery that carries him across L.A. to find her, stumbling on a series of interconnected, bizarre conspiracies that are stupid, hilarious, and deadly.
The plot here is really of little consequence. The odyssey of weirdness has no clear meaning, and Sam tends to come upon clues willy-nilly with little or no clear rhyme or reason. Cereal boxes and guitars and obscure song lyrics and dog killers and prostitutes all seem to share sinister purpose. Moreover, the film itself -- the way it is presented, and the design of certain elements of cinematography, sound mixing, music, and editing -- contains countless hidden messages as well. Case in point: the opening images (literally the first 10 seconds of the film) are symbols of a unicorn, tiger, snake, and lion. I didn't realize it until I stumbled onto Reddit, but the first letter of each of the animal names correspond to the first letter of each word in the film's title. WHAT? Apparently flocks of cult fans online have been working out the film's hidden messages, including deciphering firework sound effects as Morse code.
And this is where the film gets endlessly fascinating. Not because of all the hidden codes and messages, though it is truly mind-boggling to imagine the production designers and director coming up with all these impossibly dense Easter eggs. But because the film itself seems to be saying that all such searches for meaning are inherently stupid, pointless, and wasteful. Sam ends up completely unfulfilled, though arguably pleased with himself to some extent, and we are left with a partially solved mystery that seems more likely to be a red herring than an actual solution.
Along the way, Sam has shown himself to be sociopathic, violent, headstrong, and unable to function in an age of pop culture inundation. Sure, he's sweet and handsome and earnest, but there's not much to admire here. By the end, the film has transformed from a postmodern noir mystery to a coming-of-age search for transcendence, and ultimately to a screaming tirade against searching for any kind of hidden meaning in life. It's not saying religion, philosophy, or even secrets are bad -- perhaps -- but in making fun of us for reading into a film about being read into, there seems to be a message for anyone looking too close at ridiculous clues.
But, then, maybe that's reading too much into it.
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