Velvet Buzzsaw

"nightcrawler? i hardly know her!" - dan gilroy, probably I actually can't believe this movie was directed and written by the same person as Nightcrawler. This movie is cheeks. A satire on pretension in art and art consumerism that is as tone deaf as it is nonsensical. And maybe Netflix isn't the best place for a movie about the mix of art and capitalism. If you take it as a horror-comedy, ignoring what the movie is trying to say about art, it is rarely funny and never scary. The horror part is on par with the worst of Goosebumps, like any of the novels where Stine just writes about kids going into a room they shouldn't and discovering some dumb monster of the week for the 19th time. I've seen this described as artsy-fartsy Final Destination, but that series, for all its flaws, at least had shock value in its deaths and black comedy in its absurdity. Buzzsaw's absurdity just comes in its lack of care for the audience to have any sort of feeling towards the film. The comedy is occasionally there, and the film is at its best leaning towards its inherent cheesiness, but it takes itself so seriously for about 80% of its runtime. Jake carries this movie in the role of Morf (seriously what the fuck), but that isn't to say the cast does a bad job; while Jake is stellar, the rest of the cast does a decent enough job with what they're given. Zawe Ashton has the only performance worth major criticism, but that could be mostly coming from her character just being the least likable of all the unlikable characters, of which this movie is entirely built. I think the best summary of this movie is just to imagine Sisyphus pushing that rock, with Sisyphus just being Jake Gylenhaal and the rock being the rest of this movie.