The last time Dan Gilroy and Jake Gyllenhaal worked together, it was for Nightcrawler, which was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars and is considered (by me, at least) to be one of the best Los Angeles-set movies in recent memory. (Nightcrawler > La La Land.) The pair are reuniting on another intriguing horror-thriller, except this time, you don’t have to leave your house to see it. Although considering Nightcrawler, you might want to.
Velvet Buzzsaw stars Gyllenhaal as Morf Vandewalt (!), a bespectacled art critic who “takes us deeper and deeper into a mystery that leads to a final shocking realization,” Gilroy explained. Also in the cast: Rene Russo, “who started in a punk band in the 70s and now runs the biggest contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles,” John Malkovich as the “most successful contemporary artist in the world,” Toni Collette, Daveed Diggs, Zawe Ashton, and Billy Magnussen.
“I hope people look at art in a slightly different way. Any time you listen to a piece of music or look at a sculpture or a painting or a film, you realize the artists behind that have invested what I believe to be their creative soul into the work,” Gilroy said about the film. “To me, that’s a bit of a sacred thing and I think we’ve lost that a little bit. I would love it if we could return to that.”
Here’s the official plot synopsis:
Velvet Buzzsaw is a thriller set in the contemporary art world scene of Los Angeles where big money artists and mega-collectors pay a high price when art collides with commerce.
Velvet Buzzsaw comes out on Netflix on February 1.
