Under the Silver Lake (2018)

Under the Silver Lake is the kind of movie that makes you lean forward, not because it’s racing to answers, but because it keeps daring you to notice one more clue hiding in plain sight. It turns Los Angeles into a sunlit fever dream of codes, pop-culture echoes, and late-night paranoia, with Andrew Garfield giving a wonderfully committed performance as a drifting everyman who can’t stop pulling at a thread. The pleasure here is in the film’s ambitious, bizarre creativity—its sense that every billboard, song, and sidewalk conversation might be part of a larger, stranger pattern. It’s definitely not for viewers who want tidy explanations or conventional pacing, but if you’re in the mood for a culty, uniquely off-kilter mystery that lingers like a half-remembered dream, it’s a terrific ride.

Under the Silver Lake is clearly aiming for a sun-bleached, neo-noir fever dream about obsession, hidden codes, and the rot under LA’s glamour, and it commits hard to that vibe. The problem is it often confuses “mysterious” with “meandering,” stretching a thin thread of plot into a long, self-indulgent scavenger hunt that can feel more like a director showing off than a story going somewhere. If you need narrative discipline, likable characters, or a payoff that feels earned, this will likely test your patience—and some viewers will also be put off by how it frames and uses its female characters. Still, if you’re into surreal mood pieces, oddball set pieces, and conspiracy breadcrumbs that matter more than answers, you may find it weirdly hypnotic despite the mess.