Jake Gyllenhaal plays an art critic that is haunted by an artist’s work (literally) in the trailer for Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw.
Velvet Buzzsaw reunites Jake Gyllenhaal with his Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy and co-star Rene Russo. Here’s the plot description:
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.
Netflix
I was a huge fan of Nightcrawler. It was one of my favorite movies of 2015 and features Gyllenhaal’s best performance — he was egregiously snubbed at the Oscars (still mad).
While that movie was essentially a neo-noir crime thriller, Velvet Buzzsaw looks like it’s delving a bit into horror. It makes sense considering there were a lot of horror elements in Nightcrawler — Lou Bloom, Gyllenhaal’s character, was truly terrifying at points.
Gyllenhaal thrives when he’s playing characters falling into madness/obsession — Nightcrawler, Zodiac, Prisoners — which bodes well for the movie.
It also helps that he’s joined by a stacked supporting cast including Daveed Diggs, Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer, Bird Box‘s John Malkovich, and the current reigning queen of horror Toni Collette — following up her stunning performance in last year’s Hereditary.
Velvet Buzzsaw has a lot going for it.
It will be released on Netflix on February 1st. It will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.