What did Toni Collette have on her head?!
It took me a while, but I finally got around to watch Velvet Buzzsaw. I heard fairly mixed reviews of the film so I wasn't sure what to exactly expect. I also didn't watch a trailer or anything; I went in blind. I left pretty disappointedly. This film is pretty boring.
Starting with my positives, Jake Gyllenhaal was my favorite part of the film. I am a huge Jake Gyllenhaal fan. Donnie Darko and Nightcrawler are some of my favorite films that I have recently watched. Though he wasn't as good in this, mainly because he wasn't given much to work with, he is still pretty good. I absolutely love it when Gyllenhaal goes full sociopath. Velvet Buzzsaw has a fantastic cast. Rene Russo, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Zawe Ashton, and Natalia Dyer are all in this film. However, most of the characters are underutilized or undeveloped. I'll get more into them in my negatives. I thought that the set design for many locations, while slightly repetitive, looked great.
This film is simply messy. The screenplay, in particular, is extremely messy. This film never really stuck in one direction. Velvet Buzzsaw is categorized as a horror film. It's simply not scary; it doesn't even try to be scary for a majority of the runtime. Velvet Buzzsaw works better as a satire of the art world. Though I'm not too familiar with the modern art world, I understood the points and criticisms that the film was trying to make. The main horror element of the film is extremely week. The concept of the paintings being haunted/cursed by its artist is simply lame. We've seen premises similar to that dozens of times. The horror itself doesn't start until about half-way through the film's runtime. There are also way too many characters in the film. John Malkovich and Natalia Dyer's characters, in particular, are simply unnecessary. Dyer, known for her role in Stranger Things, is in this film as a plot device to convey information from one character to another.
In conclusion, Velvet Buzzsaw was an extremely messy film. As a satire alone, it isn't half-bad. However, as a supposed horror film, Velvet Buzzsaw fails to conjure up any scares.
5/10
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