Definitely an oddity that I both admired and enjoyed while also finding somewhat pretentious. There are some laugh out loud moments and a few unsettling sequences here that won't be forgotten. The film is a little tonally all over the place though which lessens the effect. It does have one of the best line readings of the year in Zawe Ashton's delivery over what transpires with Toni Collette's character. It's fun and worth checking out. B

This reminds me of two past films, neither particularly well-regarded: Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg's well-acted but blundering and scattershot satire of Hollywood egotism and indulgence, and Cursed, Wes Craven's tortured and re-shot-and-then-re-shot-again attempt to transplant Scream's self-reflexive, trope-deconstructing humor to both the werewolf sub-genre and a new setting, Los Angeles.

As an art-world satire, this is decent, if minor. It lands the obvious low-hanging-fruit gags: a character fawns over a plain garbage bag on the floor (what an inspired piece! a statement!) before being told it is indeed just a bag of trash, etc., etc. The plight of Natalia Dyer's long-suffering, permanently temporary secretary, always discovering corpses and being scolded by her superiors, is an amusing subplot; I half wonder if she should be the protagonist. And the always interesting Jake Gyllenhaal is as engaging as ever as an acid-tongued critic who is effectively an art-world kingmaker. He creates an affectedly dainty and pretentious caricature without being entirely devoid of humanity and sympathy.

As a horror film, this is unfortunately very mediocre. Dan Gilroy infused his directorial debut Nightcrawler with an enormous amount of nocturnal menace and propulsive energy, but the gore-and-suspense beats here (slasher-film sequences, more or less, in which a painting briefly moves as a character wanders through a space alone and then abruptly dies in an almost Final Destination-lite manner) are bizarrely listless and decidedly not pulse-raising. Only the Francis Bacon-indebted paintings are modestly eerie. The more the genre-driven side of the film of the film rises to the fore, the more the overall enterprise feels inadequate.

Yeah I watched probably 40 minutes last night before I shut it off. Wasn't in the mood. Finished it today. This will easily be one of the worst movies of 2019. I hope it gets a ton of Razzie nominations. The decent reviews are baffling. I did really like Natalia Dyer and she was the only character I wanted to survive.

D-

Yeah Nightcrawler was great. This is a misfire. I feel weird saying it takes itself too seriously because it does have some silliness but honestly it's more serious than it should be. It should be fun but it's really just boring.

I watched this last night and honestly I wasn't a big fan of it either. None of the characters were that likable or engaging and while I know that's kind of the point when I watch films I definitely like to have characters that I can at least somewhat root for. Jake Gyllenhaal's character did get some chuckles out of me, but I can't say that I really cared about him. It's a shame too because this has a really solid cast, and it was kind of fun seeing Rene Russo, Toni Collette and John Malkovich in the same scenes. The horror elements here were complete weak sauce though as nothing was ever explained properly and it felt like stuff would just randomly happen for unknown reasons. Definitely somewhat of a misfire by Gilroy.

C-

Unless Netflix has paid millions and engaged a major director (i.e. Roma, Buster Scruggs and hopefully The Irishman) - these films are generally average at best.

A shame as Nightcrawler was damn good.

It's bad. I couldn't settle into it no matter how hard I tried. I don't think this was really a story that needed to be told. At least not by Dan Gilroy. Should've given this to some horror hack, or someone that can film the fuck out of it, like a Fincher or a Soderbergh. Surely Gilroy has more of a voice and more ideas in him than this; which is basically Final Destination for the art world. Or maybe Nightcrawler was a fluke. We'll see with his next film. And Gyllenhaal wasn't very good either! Not nearly biting or camp or funny enough. Maybe that's his range. But I felt he was lacking here. Velvet Buzzsaw is a total misfire.

I enjoyed this. Sure it is weird and gets pretentious anytime they try to make a social commentary on art, but it is effective as both a satire and a horror film. It builds up all the characters just enough so we are scared for them, but aren't all that bothered by their deaths. The death scenes reminded me of Final Destination in the way that I never knew where the kill was going to come from. The suspense had me on edge every time, and that's something impressive considering how desensitized I've become.