Just like Mulholland Drive. Except really, really, really awful

Positioning itself as equal parts neo-noir and genre subversion, Under the Silver Lake is essentially a cross between David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) and Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice (2009). With the major difference being that it's absolutely, unrelentingly terrible. Attempting to work as both an example and a subversion of genre, Silver Lake is a mystery noir that is at pains to undermine and critique many of the best known generic markers. A 140-minute labyrinthine, paranoia-laden shaggy-dog story full of MacGuffins, false leads, narrative dead ends, and unexplained details, the film relocates the detective stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett to the chaotic postmodern era of cognitive semiotics where the relationship between signifier and signified is now so arbitrary that meaning-making itself has become a protean commodity. However, it is easily the most self-important piece of garbage I've seen in a long time; a philosophically juvenile rumination thoroughly convinced of its own portentousness. Fundamentally misogynistic (it's not misogyny, apparently, because it's being super-ironic when it presents no less than six female characters as literal sex toys for the protagonist), it's at least 45 minutes too long, with an unfocused narrative, poorly thought-out metaphors, an insipid protagonist, about 377 themes, and a laughable screenplay. The cinematography is pretty though.

For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/FBISp