Velvet Buzzsaw Review

In a scene from writer/director Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw, an art studio owner walks into the artist Piers’s (played by John Malkovich) workspace, eager to see his newest piece. When he enters, his eyes begin to fixate on 3 bags of garbage slouched together in the middle of the room. “That’s not the art.”, explains Piers, correcting the eyes of the studio owner to a canvas that holds his true work. Velvet Buzzsaw as a film wants to do this same thing, often striving to divert the viewers attention from the various messes that slowly amass throughout its runtime. Unfortunately, it has nothing worthwhile on the canvas to show.

Dan Gilroy has made an impact since deciding to go behind the camera in 2014. His directional debut Nightcrawler was a vile and gritty tale about a nocturnal journalist/businessman with non-existent morals. For his sophomore piece Roman J Israel, Esq., he decided to go a different direction, giving us an intriguing and human story that was heightened by the impeccable acting of Denzel Washington. Gilroy decides to once again venture down a different path with Velvet Buzzsaw; however, this time he seems to be lost, creating a film that suffers from an identity crisis, blending together scenes bloated with high-brow satirical quips about art with b-level horror while managing to succeed at neither.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Morf Vandewait, a pretentious and prolific critic whose word is law in the Los Angeles contemporary-art scene. After having the beautifully somber works of recently deceased and unknown artist Ventril Dease brought to him by his girlfriend Josephina, they disregard the lamented artists final wishes of destroying the paintings in order to exploit them for money. This greed summons a supernatural force that sets out to prevent the egocentric cast from cashing in.

Nothing of Gilroy’s vision manages to work coherently or elegantly though. Both the satire and horror consistently fall flat. Many of the characters are given nothing to do, with their drab dialogue and self-centered attitudes leaving you unsympathetic for their often-lackluster demise. This emanates into a film where a protagonist is completely non existent, leaving you disliking everyone who is uncreatively lead to slaughter.

The A-list cast try to breathe as much life into their roles as possible, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Toni Collette being standouts. Dan Gilroy also exhibits wonderful ambition in his direction of certain scenes, never being afraid to keep the camera moving to create some wonderfully framed perspectives.

The few positive takeaways don’t save Velvet Buzzsaw in the end though. The outcome is an uninspired mess that lacks originality. Losing its way early and never being able to get back on track.

Velvet Buzzsaw's unlikable characters and bland horror results in a rare mistep for Dan Gilroy.

Produced By: Netflix
Runtime: 109 minutes
Rating: R