Under the Silver Lake

Movie
Original title	Under the Silver Lake
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	2018
length	139 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	David Robert Mitchell
script	David Robert Mitchell
production	Chris Bender , ; Michael De Luca , ; Adele Romanski , ; Jake Weiner , ; David Robert Mitchell
music	Rich Vreeland
camera	Mike Gioulakis
cut	Julio Perez
occupation
	Andrew Garfield : Sam; Riley Keough : Sarah; Topher Grace : Man from the bar; Jimmi Simpson : Everyone; Callie Hernandez : Millicent Sevence; Riki Lindhome : actress; Patrick Fischler : Comic Man; Zosia Mamet : Troy;

Under the Silver Lake is an American neo-noir - thriller by David Robert Mitchell , who on 15 May 2018 under the international competition of the International Film Festival of Cannes premiered and was released in Germany on December 6, 2018th

action

Sam is an aimless 33-year-old in Silver Lake, Los Angeles who is interested in conspiracy theories and hidden messages in pop culture and has no interest in paying his overdue rent. The public is warned: "Beware of the dog killer" who murders pets. Sam meets with his new neighbor Sarah, who caught him spying on her, but invites him over anyway. The two get drunk and watch a show on TV, but when their roommates interrupt them as they start kissing, Sarah suggests that Sam leave and they spend the next day together.

In the morning, Sam discovers that Sarah and her roommates moved out overnight and becomes obsessed with finding out what happened. When Sam notices a strange symbol on the apartment wall, he chases a woman out of the apartment to a number of elite Hollywood parties and meets the pop band "Jesus and the Brides of Dracula" and a performance artist who works for works a prostitution ring of struggling actresses. They all seem connected, but Sam struggles to find a pattern that makes sense.

At his apartment, Sam sees a news report about the discovery of billionaire Jefferson Sevence, who was burned to death in a car with three women. At the crime scene, Sam recognizes Sarah's hat and a small dog that looks like Sarah's dog found dead.

Sam contacts the writer of Under the Silver Lake , an underground comic about urban legends from the neighborhood. He tells Sam that Sarah's Disappearance, the Dog Killer, the Owl's Kiss - a naked woman in an owl mask who seduces and kills people in their sleep - and messages in pop culture are part of the same conspiracy, and has security cameras installed throughout his house. Police later find the author dead in what appears to be a suicide. Sam enters the house and looks at the security records and discovers that the author was killed by a woman disguised as an Owl Kiss.

In search of clues hidden in Jesus and the Brides of the Dracula Songs, Sam meets the "King of the Homeless" who takes him to a bunker under Griffith Park, which leads to a supermarket. With the help of the performance artist and her friends, Sam meets the "songwriter," a fabulously wealthy old man who claims to have written the most popular songs in history. When the songwriter tries to shoot him, Sam kills him with a guitar that is said to have belonged to Sam's musical idol, Kurt Cobain.

At a party in the Hollywood Hills, Sam meets Jefferson Sevence's daughter, Millicent, where he also meets his now famous ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. Millicent persuades Sam to go swimming in the Silver Lake Reservoir. She gives him a bracelet - identical to Sarah's - that belonged to her father, and is shot by invisible attackers and sinks to the bottom of the lake, reproducing a pose from Sam's favorite edition of Playboy.

Sam manages to escape, combining the bracelet, the author's cereal box prize, and a Legend of Zelda card from the first edition of Nintendo Power to reveal a place missing from the web maps where he finds a man and three women in a small hut. When Sam holds it with the gun in his hand, the man reveals the truth: throughout history, wealthy men like him have decided to lock themselves up in underground bunkers similar to the one Sam discovered, similar to the Egyptian pharaohs, so that their souls can be kept accompanied by three women were able to “rise”. Sarah and her roommates were Sevence's wives, and their deaths were faked. Their bunker has been sealed, but they can still be accessed via video telephony. Sam speaks to Sarah, who confirms that she entered the bunker voluntarily. At peace with their fate, she and Sam share an emotional farewell.

Sam, along with the man and his wives, passes out when the Homeless King arrives to capture him, upset that he found dog biscuits in his pocket. When Sam tells him that he actually didn't have a dog and only kept the cookies as a reminder of his painful breakup and the knowledge that he would never see his girlfriend's dog again, the homeless king lets him go. When he returns home, Sam spends the night with a neighbor whose parrot is repeating incomprehensible words. From the balcony, Sam watches as his landlord and a police officer enter his apartment to evict him. They notice that one of his walls has been painted with the strange symbol he saw earlier, which Sam now knows is a message of the conspiracy to "keep quiet".

production

Directed by David Robert Mitchell , who made his directorial debut in 2010 with the coming-of-age film The Myth of the American Sleepover and released the horror film It Follows in 2014 . In Under the Silver Lake , however, it is a modern neo-noir - thriller . In May 2016, the cast of Andrew Garfield , who plays Sam in the film, was revealed. Riley Keough took on the role of Sarah. The film was shot in the Bronson Caves in Griffith Park and in the Financial District of Los Angeles . The cost of production was approximately $ 8.5 million.

The score was composed by Richard Vreeland aka Disasterpeace, who had already worked with Mitchell on the film It Follows . The soundtrack for the film was released as a download by Milan Records at the beginning of December 2018 and is due to be released in physical form in April 2019. Spread over two CDs, it contains a total of 35 pieces of music, including What's The Frequency, Kenneth? and Strange Currencies by REM , both of which are featured on their album Monster .

A24 secured the distribution rights. A first trailer for the film was presented in March 2018. The film celebrated its world premiere on May 15, 2018 as part of the international competition at the Cannes International Film Festival . In September 2018 the film was shown as part of the Fantasy Film Festival and in October 2018 at the Sitges Film Festival . After the film was originally scheduled to hit selected cinemas in New York and Los Angeles on June 22, 2018, the release date was later moved to December 7, 2018 and then to April 2019. It finally started here on April 19, 2019. A theatrical release in Germany took place on December 6, 2018.

reception

Age rating

In the USA, the film received an R rating from the MPAA , which corresponds to a rating of 17 and over. In Germany, the film was approved by the FSK for people aged 16 and over.

Reviews

Kai Mihm from epd Film describes that David Robert Mitchell creates a labyrinthine dramaturgy of confusion and wrong tracks, and Sam continually comes across new clues and increasingly crazy conspiracy theories: “Like a stoned Sam Spade, he stumbles through the various subcultures of LA, and as Viewers wonder if the whole thing turns out to be a drug dream in the end. The story doesn't really make sense, but that's exactly what Mitchell's point is: The (detour) way is the goal. ”Mitchell's film is an exuberant reflection on genres, a hodgepodge of classic motifs, quotes from film history and pop cultural allusions, partly a smart parody, partly more surreal Paranoia thriller, so Mihm. The film combines the aesthetics of classic studio films, including rear projections and matte paintings , with references to Hitchcock , Polanski and Lynch , to Raymond Chandler and George Cukor . Brian De Palma's Vertigo paraphrase Body Double , playing in Los Angeles , from which Mitchell took over the lascivious and the fetishistic, according to Mihm , forms a clear reference point .