Under the Silver Lake
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
- crime
- drama
- mystery
The story
Young and disenchanted Sam meets a mysterious and beautiful woman who's swimming in his building's pool one night. When she suddenly vanishes the next morning, Sam embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles to decode the secret behind her disappearance, leading him into the murkiest depths of mystery, scandal and conspiracy.
What it’s like
Sun-bleached Los Angeles in wide, hazy daylight gives way to sodium-orange streetlight, dusty canyon roads and cramped apartment interiors lit by lamps and TV glow. The camera drifts through long, unhurried tracking shots and sudden composed frames, with the occasional animated cutaway or dream interlude breaking the realism, and the score leans on lush, melancholy strings and faintly ominous synth pulses. The vibe is hazy paranoia with a wry, sun-drenched dread: part neo-noir, part shaggy Hollywood satire, the kind of thing that feels like a sleepless late-night drive through the hills. Its pacing is loose and meandering, more wandering than thriller, and its emotional register is ironic and bruised rather than cosy. Sam is an aimless, faintly sad young man who slowly lets his obsessions consume him. Violence is rare and mostly offscreen, but there is nudity, sexual content, drug use and a steady undercurrent of unsettling menace. Best for viewers who enjoy puzzle-box mysteries, offbeat humour and atmosphere over resolution, and who are comfortable with a film that stays deliberately elusive.
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