Velvet Buzzsaw - Critiquing the critics

Written & directed by Dan Gilroy

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Toni Collette

"My disappointment is immeasurable..." - TheReportOfTheWeek

(Spoilers and heavy opinions below)

Netflix

So I recently watched Dan Gilroy's newest film 'Velvet Buzzsaw' on Netflix. I was anticipating this film for a number of reasons: Gyllenhaal and Gilroy were teaming up again, it's a horror film with Gyllenhaal as an art critic, and I was hoping it could've possibly been almost as good as 'Nightcrawler'. Now, Nightcrawler is one of my favorite films of all time. Dan Gilroy's directorial debut starred Jake Gyllenhaal as well, so naturally I was pretty excited for this one.

But oh man...I was severely disappointed by this film. I want to separate the different aspects of the movie that disappointed me.

The cinematography:

After watching the trailer, I wasn't impressed by its look. I figured that the trailer made it out to look that way, so I didn't bother with it. But after watching the film, I can say that the cinematography is very bland and gives the film little to no life. Gilroy brought in the same cinematographer from Nightcrawler for this film, but I have no clue what either of them were thinking. For a horror film, the lighting setup was fairly strange in my opinion, and not a strange that works in their favor. The film's cinematography often reminded me of a disposable CW or Netflix show, which contains the same shot-reverse-shot and over-the-shoulder conversations.

There weren't any shots that made me think/say "Now that is a nice shot." For a film about art, the colors looked so dull and uninteresting. When the colors would pop out finally, it would be CG which made it look even worse. Overall, the photography wasn't impressive especially compared to Gilroy's previous films.

The directing:

As a horror film, Velvet Buzzsaw doesn't work. I honestly have no clue what it is genre. Is it mystery? Thriller? Drama maybe? It doesn't work as any because the tone is all over the place. In a few scenes it's just art people talking about art show drama, and then in the next it's a 'suspenseful' scene where someone dies randomly. The film feels so directionless where I felt that the script had direction cues written into it and the actors and cinematographer had to navigate on these cues. Every "suspenseful" scene felt super slow and boring. There were no slow camera movements or shots where I genuinely felt excited about in these scenes, which brings me to my next category of complaints...

THE SCRIPT:

This film makes no sense at all. Here is my quick synopsis of the film: An assistant trying to make a name for herself finds paintings in a dead guy's apartment, and soon after bad stuff starts happening and art people start dying. That's the film's plot. Initially, I thought the idea sounded interesting. But the script attempts to juggle so many themes and storylines that I could not care less about any of the characters. I sort of cared about Jake Gyllenhaal's character because he was the smartest and most relatable out of all the characters. I understand that this is a satire on the art world, but the film focuses on so many pointless things that its message feels muddled and incoherent in the long run.

I first summarized the film as "Final Destination but with pretentious art people," which it is. The film takes so much time with unnecessary scenes involving the side characters that I could not care whether or not they died (I can't even remember their names). The reason for all the weird stuff happening is because a girl stole art that was cursed...and the artwork could not be any less intimidating than it already is. Nothing about the old man's artwork felt scary or frightening.

The film attempts to be everything but in the end, it comes out as a bland satire. However, there are some redeeming qualities to this film. Most of the acting was pretty good (seeing Jake Gyllenhaal as an art critic was great). I think the 3rd act was redeemable, until the last 10 minutes or so where it all falls apart. I do like the last minute or so where someone starts selling the cursed artwork on the street for $5 a piece; I felt that was a good way to end the film. In the end, the movie wasn't horrible but it was very disappointing.

Netflix