Velvet Buzzsaw

One great thing about watching new movies on Netflix is the lack of buzz around them before release. With a cinema release you're constantly bombarded with posters and trailers for weeks and sometimes months beforehand. So much so that by the time you sit down to to watch the film you feel like you've already seen it. Netflix doesn't need to use that tack and it works to our advantage because more often than not you watch a new film on netflix and know very little about it. Velvet Buzzsaw is an example of this. I knew it was set in the art world and that it looked a little bit kooky. Little did I know there was a bloody horror movie ahead of me.

Morf Vandewalt (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an art critic who loves to look down his nose at the paintings before him. His friend is Josephina (Zawe Ashton), an art buyer/seller who works for gallery owner Rhodora (Rene Russo). When her neighbour Vetril Dease dies she discovers his cache of art and knows she's found something very special. Rhodora and Morf sense it's potential too and before long their new discovery is setting the art world on fire. But then the people working with the art start noticing strange things happening. Very strange things.....

I enjoyed this. It's blisteringly stupid in places but it worked for me. I love when a horror movie just goes for broke and embraces the silliness inherent in the genre. When it ignores the need for a complicated backstory or even logic and just decides to have fun. It reminded me of last year's Hereditary (Toni Collette appears in this too btw) in that sense, no silly cop outs, no dream endings, just Horror with a capital H. It's even better when the actors within decide to let loose and have a bit of craic. Jake Gyllenhaal isn't an actor I'd ever associate with genre movies but he gives his all here. His Morf is an asshole, a pretentious fella who lives to critique, one scene at a funeral even sees him whine about the colour of a coffin. It's his life. But as the story progresses he starts to question the way he's lived his life & crumbles psychologically and while he mightn't be having fun us viewers certainly will. 

Some might laud this as something new and original but it's really just a rehash of stories horror b-movies have been doing for years. Like the art world the film is set in there's nothing new and when there is it's jumped on and devoured. It's the world it's set in that makes it such a fun watch though. Writer/Director Dan Gilroy has a whale of a time ripping the piss out of the self importance of this arena and it's inhabitants. One darkly hilarious scene has visitors to a gallery assuming the remnants of a supernatural event are part of the exhibit itself, traipsing through blood and dragging it everywhere without a second thought. The shallowness of the world is poked at too. No one is really friendly with each other or loves each other, relationships are built on what people can get out of them. The film is set in Los Angeles unsurprisingly, a city built on loveless business relationships. Like Gilroy's previous film, 2014's excellent Nightcrawler, this is also set in L.A. It stands in for a world seen as a venal place, packed full of people out for themselves. Gilroy has a cynical world view for sure.

Vod and Lorna Cole. The film we never knew we needed.

Horror like comedy only really works if the cast works. Here we get Gyllenhaal, Toni Collette, Rene Russo, John Malkovich and Zawe Ashton. Each of them firing on all cylinders. Ashton is mostly know for her work as the hedonistic Vod in Channel 4's Fresh Meat but she more than holds her own here. It's great to see Russo onscreen too. This is her second time being directed by her husband and they work well together. Like Gyllenhaal she embraces the silliness of the whole thing and gets a great scene near the end that helps us understand the film's odd title.

If you have a high tolerance for silliness you should enjoy this. Even if you aren't a fan of gory scares there's plenty of knowing winks and nods at the awfulness of the art world to enjoy. There's not much new here but it goes for broke and the cast is wicked. 

Available to watch on Netflix right now.