I put this movie on my to-see list after seeing a Facebook friend mention it as one of his favorites of the year. I was a LITTLE leery of taking the recommendation of someone whose favorite movie is A Serbian Film, but we do have quite a few movies in common like Get Out and A Quiet Place, so I took a chance that this would be one of those. I’m glad I did. The movie fucking rules.
Synopsis: an unknown artist dies, and an ambitious but low-level gallery employee steals his stuff and passes it off as “look what I found in the dumpster.” The artist actually wanted his work destroyed after his death, and it doesn’t take long to figure out why. The plot is strongly reminiscent of Stephen King’s Duma Key, with hints of “The Road Virus Heads North,” but thematically it works as a scathing satire on the professional art world and the poseurs and sellouts that populate it.
With a name like “Velvet Buzzsaw,” I was expecting something a LOT more schlocky. It’s actually deeply cerebral and intelligent, with fully fleshed characters that I didn’t actually LIKE but understood and could root for. It’s rare for me to like a movie peopled by unlikable characters. If I don’t give a shit what happens to a character, then why am I watching it? (If I want to watch a series of unpleasant events that happen to unpleasant people I’ll watch the news or turn on a Trump speech. Then I can experience existential dread and horror for free.) But the characters in Velvet Buzzsaw are so genuine and multidimensional, I still cared what happened to them even as I watched the carnage unfold and thought, “Well THAT is one big ugly chicken that has come home to roost.” The mistakes they make are mistakes ANYONE could make. At no point did I roll my eyes and say, “Oh come on!” Turning my tension and mounting fear into frustration at a character’s stupidity is the fastest way to get me to turn off a movie, and Velvet Buzzsaw avoids that degree of incompetence by a comfortable margin.
Visually the movie is fantastic. The settings are brightly lit, with colorful contrasts and striking artwork. The cinematography is deft and competent, with only one jump scare that I personally would define as cliche. I always get a kick out of horror stories that take place in broad daylight or under bright lights. Anyone can make the dark scary, and VB does that as well, but it does not rely on the darkness to bring the fear. Two of the best death scenes happen under bright gallery lights or broad daylight, and that banality of setting just adds to the horror. “The sun is shining, the birds are singing,” the movie says, “but nothing can save you from horror that your hubris invited in.”
Velvet Buzzsaw is streaming on Netflix. Check it out, and then come back here so we can discuss it.
Dawn Napier 