Velvet Buzzsaw is a a strange film. It’s stuck in between two worlds. It’s part horror film, part art world critique and probably isn’t enough of either to really work. And that’s a pity because it has a lot of good elements. I wonder if there was some heavy editing to sway the film in one direction or another.

Jake Gyllenhaal is class as usual, reminding me slightly of Nightcrawler. John Malkovich plays a character that I assume is just himself if he was an older artist. Zawe Ashton is great and I spent the whole film trying to figure out where I remembered her from – it’s an episode of Misfits. Toni Collette and Rene Russo are also very solid.

And that’s part of the problem. The cast and their performances are good. The idea is cool. The context is interesting. Everything works well independently but it just doesn’t tie together that well. It doesn’t commit to being scary or being a critique enough.

Worth a watch but what could it have been?