‘The End of Oak Street’s Director Made a Cult Detective Movie You’ve Probably Never Seen

The recent breakout success of movies like Obsession and Backrooms — which aren’t just unrelated to IP, but the product of distinct, personal visions — has pushed the cultural conversation to ask why more studios don’t trust filmmakers to come up with unique ideas, and release more original movies. The answer is that when you give a filmmaker the budget and freedom to follow their vision, you don’t always end up with runaway hits that dominate the box office. Sometimes, you end up with movies like Under the Silver Lake, the surprisingly creative, wildly unhinged noir-comedy-thriller by David Robert Mitchell, which followed his own indie success story, 2014’s It Follows.

Shot in 2016 but not released in U.S. theaters until 2019 (it was released in France a year earlier), Under the Silver Lake was considered confounding even by A24 standards, earning a polarizing 58% on Rotten Tomatoes and failing to recoup its modest budget of $8 million, earning only $2 million worldwide. While the movie isn’t for everyone, it is an ambitious one, and marks a fascinating follow-up for a filmmaker who could’ve otherwise been known as “The Slow-Moving Horror Guy,” following the success of It Follows — but decided instead to make a stylistic left turn.

The film follows Sam (Andrew Garfield), a directionless Los Angeles resident with a fondness for conspiracy theories, who becomes infatuated with his neighbor, Sarah (Riley Keough), after spending an evening with her. The next day, however, she goes missing, and her apartment is empty, except for an odd symbol painted on the wall. From there, Sam tries to uncover what happened to her, and in doing so, learns the shocking truth that…Hollywood is actually super weird.

‘Under the Silver Lake’ Broke All the Rules

Image via A24

Under the Silver Lake is a dense movie. It clocks in at two hours and twenty minutes and is filled with really bizarre characters, lurid imagery and an intricate mystery plot. It’s a steep creative shift from the streamlined premise and small production of It Follows —and the same can be said for the lead performance by Andrew Garfield, who played severely against type in his greasiest role to date as Sam. The character isn’t charming or charismatic like Peter Parker or Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick… Boom! Rather, he’s aimless, misogynistic, and…potentially a dog serial killer? (The movie never says it outright, but it’s one of the film’s biggest questions.)

Sam’s unlikable but also unpredictable, which is what makes him interesting. He’s not aimless in a cool, Zen way like The Dude; he’s more like a character from a ’70s conspiracy thriller, and the movie plays up old-school Hollywood connection with its noir tone and score, allusions to Alfred Hitchcock, and especially its use of famous Los Angeles locations like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Griffith Observatory, and The Last Bookstore (misleading title, by the way, there’s still several left). The movie also plays up the romantic perception of Hollywood, but contrasts that with the seedy and gross reality of the film business, especially for aspiring actresses. It’s like a more cynical version of La La Land, complete with cults and subliminal messages.

In ‘Under the Silver Lake,’ Things Go From Weird to Strange… to Strange

This is probably where the movie alienated most people. It introduces a lot of strange aspects, and many of them don’t get a satisfying resolution — or any resolution at all, really. If you don’t believe how out-there this movie gets, check out this factually accurate line from the movie’s Wikipedia plot summary: “Sam realizes the bracelet is engraved with chess moves, using them to plot coordinates on a Nintendo Power diagram and overlaying the map from the cereal box to reveal an off-the-grid location in the Hollywood Hills.”

For the film’s fans, though, that bizarre energy is part of what makes it so interesting. It helps that, as wild as the movie gets, it always has that throughline of Sam’s search for Sarah, and all the odd details, like the recurring imagery and conspiracy themes, feel like they’re there to serve a point, rather than just weird for the sake of being weird. Some will leave the movie not understanding what it all meant (speaking from experience here), but it still has a story that you can follow, supplies answers where it matters, and leaves enough up for interpretation that you’ll still be thinking about it after the credits roll.

Considering the critical and audience reception to Under the Silver Lake, it’s pretty impressive that Mitchell’s follow-up movie, The End of Oak Street, has major studio backing, with J.J. Abrams on as the producer, and a whopping $85 million budget. That’s a pretty big third (technically fourth) bite at the apple, but by the looks of how weird The End of Oak Street looks, maybe Under the Silver Lake was something of a proof-of-concept for how crazy Mitchell can get when he’s given free-range to do what he wants with a budget to back it up.