Movies about art can be a hard thing to do right, and that really shows in Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this nauseating satire of the art world that morphs into a light yet gruesome horror flick.
The thriller centers around an abundance of paintings which are found in the apartment of a dead artist, and the greedy art world doesn’t miss a beat to claim and sell them. However, the paintings seem to give off a curious, almost supernatural, force of their own.
The film exposes those people who only care about buying and selling their work. The metaphorical and real demons in this film stand in place of the consequences of tampering with art that may have come from a dark place or state of mind. For some, a critique of the art world blended with a slasher flick may be too incongruous but in this case, it kind of works. At first the movie is inviting you to have fun, and has you think about the subtext second.
Jake Gyllenhaal delivered a great performance and after taking one look at the rest of the cast, I was beyond hyped to watch the movie. But even its all star cast was not enough to save this doomed film. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had to write this review, I wouldn’t have managed to sit through the whole hour and 53 minutes.
As a horror film itself, Velvet Buzzsaw falls short. The movie is ridden with crazed monkeys that come to life, paintings that move when you’re not looking and death scenes that were meant to be grim and horrific but were in turn just bland and drab. It might sound terrifying but when translated to the screen, it was simply unimpressive. This can be a problem when it comes to a horror flick. Imagine you go to a fancy restaurant that is more focused on it’s plating and decoration than the taste and flavor of the food. That is Velvet Buzzsaw in a nutshell.
The thriller centers around an abundance of paintings which are found in the apartment of a dead artist, and the greedy art world doesn’t miss a beat to claim and sell them. However, the paintings seem to give off a curious, almost supernatural, force of their own.
The film exposes those people who only care about buying and selling their work. The metaphorical and real demons in this film stand in place of the consequences of tampering with art that may have come from a dark place or state of mind. For some, a critique of the art world blended with a slasher flick may be too incongruous but in this case, it kind of works. At first the movie is inviting you to have fun, and has you think about the subtext second.
Jake Gyllenhaal delivered a great performance and after taking one look at the rest of the cast, I was beyond hyped to watch the movie. But even its all star cast was not enough to save this doomed film. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had to write this review, I wouldn’t have managed to sit through the whole hour and 53 minutes.
As a horror film itself, Velvet Buzzsaw falls short. The movie is ridden with crazed monkeys that come to life, paintings that move when you’re not looking and death scenes that were meant to be grim and horrific but were in turn just bland and drab. It might sound terrifying but when translated to the screen, it was simply unimpressive. This can be a problem when it comes to a horror flick. Imagine you go to a fancy restaurant that is more focused on it’s plating and decoration than the taste and flavor of the food. That is Velvet Buzzsaw in a nutshell.