I was primed to like Under the Silver Lake and willing to work at it if needed, thanks to how great It Follows was, and the way that earlier film so completely nailed style, mood and (sly) thematic substance. In the event, there were bits of it I liked - the sinisterly glossy atmosphere, the twinned depiction of Andrew Garfield's character's anomie and shagginess of the story, the bursts of humour, the way it was all coiled around a thesis about the experience of emptiness of the current generation of youngish people amidst the ahistorical detritus of contemporary culture. But I'm not yet convinced, relatively fresh from watching it, that what it had to offer was worth the absence of most of the more conventional pleasures of movies.
