Director Dan Gilroy gave us one of the best movies of 2014 with Nightcrawler, a creepy thriller that highly satirized the media, and was one of the most original movies of that year. After his next directorial effort, Roman J. Israel, Esq. wound up being a more straightforward legal effort, he has returned to satirical thriller territory with Velvet Buzzsaw, a horror movie that also satirized the world of art. Unfortunately, Gilroy’s critique of the art world is nowhere near as engaging as his media satire.
The film follows employees of an art gallery after one of them, Josephina (Zawe Ashton), finds a dead man named Dease in her apartment building. Discovering his paintings, Josephina steals them and brings them to the gallery, where her boss Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo) exhibits them, to the delight of their friend and art critic Morf (Jake Gyllenhaal). However, many of the employees and associates of the gallery begin getting brutally killed by a mysterious force, which leads Morf to suspect they may be connected to the stolen paintings.
This movie is one part ghost story and one part satire, and unfortunately, it never delves too deep into either to make for an entirely cohesive experience, only just managing to stay afloat. The ghost story aspect is by far the stronger of the two elements, with moments that channel the same creepiness that we felt in Nightcrawler. There are some visually-pleasing moments, especially the creative ways in which some of the death scenes occur. Horror fans will be able to get their fix, though this part of the story still could have used some tweaking, as we don’t see so much of the psychological effects of the ghost on the main characters, only scratching the surface of this element.
Meanwhile, the satirical aspect of this movie is a mess. The characters are just as shallow as the actual sort of people they’re making fun of, with most of them containing very little character depth. The movie never really provides anything insightful to say on the art world, and it’s dubious what the actual message of the film is. It may have meant to be a critique on how certain art aficionados can be self-absorbed and greedy, but the message is unclear, as we don’t spend enough time with many of them, and most don’t really come to a stunning revelation by the film’s end.
Each of the characters are portrayed as if they’re meant to have flamboyant, larger than life personalities, but the film never really reaches any ridiculous heights with any of them, outside of maybe Gyllenhaal’s character. The movie brings up a few absurd characters and themes and sometimes they are entertaining, but never fully commits to any of the ludicrous concepts it brings up (outside of Hoboman, a whacky-looking robotic art statue that’s housed inside the gallery). This is a movie that would have vastly benefited from being more ludicrous in nature in order to fully work, and instead tries to be silly while still taking itself seriously to a certain degree.
The cast does look like they’re having some fun with the material, even if their characters aren’t always the most intriguing. As mentioned, Gyllenhaal is the one who gets to act the most over-the-top, managing to get in a good couple of moments where he can start screaming his head off to almost Nicolas Cage-levels of intensity. These moments are a welcome touch for the film’s third act, though it would have been nice to see him completely lose his mind much earlier on in the film. Rene Russo - who we’ve criminally seen much less of these days - gives a solid performance as the greedy art gallery owner, while Toni Collette gets to ham it up in her brief time on screen, with her character being very underused.
A lot of the supporting cast beyond these three essentially go to waste altogether. Ashton gives a fairly straightforward performance and is clearly a talented actress, but really doesn’t get to have as much fun with the material as the other three did. Meanwhile, Daveed Diggs, an incredibly talented actor who gave one of the finest performances of 2018 in Blindspotting, is reduced to a minor supporting role where he’s meant to just service Ashton’s story rather than provide anything meaningful or insightful.
Also, the inclusion of John Malkovich is utterly baffling, as he served essentially no purpose to the plot whatsoever and could have easily been cut from this movie. A movie such as this would have been perfect for him as - if Burn After Reading has taught us - he can really go all out when it comes to satirical, over-the-top material. But he’s extremely subdued here as a former artist for the art gallery that does absolutely nothing to advance the story, yet gets a couple of scenes dedicated to him anyway.
Velvet Buzzsaw is a mildly entertaining venture that should have hit way harder than it ultimately did. The film mixes a ghost story with a satire of the art world, and while the satire totally misses the mark, the ghost story elements are fun, despite not going as fully in-depth with the haunting as it should have gone. The movie scratches the surface of absurd territory, only occasionally embracing the kooky concepts it brings up. This isn’t the cult movie that it had the potential to be, but it’s worth a watch.
Comentarios