Review of Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) by Nothingreviews — 15 Feb 2019

From the director of Nightcrawlers and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Velvet Buzzsaw is a movie that is quite different from other movies as it takes horror elements into this weird art/fashion film. I just don't know how to put it to words but it's really a good movie but there are problems which bugged me after the movie.

I first want to put out that Jake Gyllenhaal was one of the best actors in this movie (as always) playing this sassy art reviewer who caused many problems with his reviews being too, critical, you could tell that he has a problem and he realized it when he comes across the paintings and he knows that it's cursed and he used to be this confident and critical person and now he became this scared, frightened, and he looks everywhere when he goes to places. Jake did so well with this character. I like the combination of supernatural horror bringing into this art world which I've never seen before and keeps up our attention as to who painted these paintings, why were they cursed and who's was the artist and his back story and most of these were answered in this movie. The actors and actress's performance are well mixed. Natalia Dyer did a really good job being this used assistant and being treated badly and I love how she's always the first to witness the murder every time which is really funny. Rene Russo was pretty good as well but I'm a bit mixed with Zawe Ashton character which her performance is alright but her personality sucks. The cinematography is not bad. there's one scene where there opened the bag with the cursed paintings and goes looks directly to the people which emphasizes that the sprites are spying at them which is a great way to show not tell to show sprites. The deaths are pretty creative and original and yeah that's basically why I liked this film.

However, again there are problems that just bugged me and it's easily avoidable situations that the characters could have been avoided as for example, Josephina waits for a tow truck to get rid of a car blocking her, then the camera does a 360 degrees around her and magically a room pop out looking like an art museum and I know she looked at that wall before and then she goes in that room and calls someone. If I was in that situation, I would just be weirded out and wait for the tow truck. I'm surprised she didn't her the paint dripping from the paints. Josephina is kind of a dick, she cheated on Morf (played by Jake) whilst before her boyfriend cheated on her. It's pretty messed up since Morf has some problems and instead of being a dick to him, you could have been nicer and try to support him but no, you just want to get revenge on him which really? Now when I say that there will be horror elements, this does mean there very cheap "jump scares" which could have been done right but there use loud sound effects and something jumps out which is just dumb to do and ruins the atmosphere of in this world and I could see how these elements can be created without loud sounds with the cursed art but they didn't just becomes more of a thriller than a horror movie. I do recommend it but don't expect something scary coming out as I wasn't scared at all, more like a mystery and thriller but if you do like thrillers then yeah watch this movie then.