Crazy premise, missed opportunities in 'Velvet Buzzsaw'

Jake Gyllenhaal really commits to the bit.

Minus two brief asides into shallow blockbuster territory (“The Day After Tomorrow” and “Prince of Persia”), Gyllenhaal tends to focus on projects with distinct, challenging characters. Broadly known for strong work in acclaimed films like “Zodiac,” “Stronger” and “Brokeback Mountain,” Gyllenhaal isn’t afraid to take big risks in smaller movies — think Denis Villeneuve’s mind-bending “Enemy,” or his absurd “celebrity zoologist” character in Bong Joon Ho’s super-pig adventure “Okja” (it’s on Netflix; watch it).

Writer/director Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler” from 2014 contains one of Gyllenhaal’s best efforts. The actor plays a skeevy videographer who sells salacious footage to a crime-obsessed L.A. news station manager played by Rene Russo. The movie itself, though a bit obvious in its criticism of sensationalistic news reporting, earned Gilroy an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay, and it made him someone to watch going forward, with or without the aid of Gyllenhaal.

Skipping past Gilroy’s ho-hum 2017 follow-up (the Denzel Washington legal thriller “Roman J. Israel, Esq.”), Gilroy reteams with Gyllenhaal and Russo for “Velvet Buzzsaw,” a supernatural horror movie set in the world of the Los Angeles contemporary art scene. It premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival and is now already available to stream on Netflix.

It’s insane.

Gyllenhaal plays a renowned art critic — the kind of guy who can make and break careers with just a few sentences of barbs or praise. The trailer for the movie makes the performance look like caricature, but Morf Vandewalt is a more complicated character than his name lets on. If only the movie focused more on him, or if Gilroy chose to make him more the center of this ghost story.

The plot description will either sell you on “Velvet Buzzsaw” or keep you far away. A gallery employee (Zawe Ashton) discovers a stockpile of gorgeous-but-profoundly disturbing paintings by a dead neighbor. Her boss (Russo) then sets out to create a buying frenzy for the artist with the help of Morf, who becomes obsessed with the work.

Then the paintings start murdering people. Or the ghost of the artist begins murdering people using various art installations. Or something.

Despite predictably striking cinematography from Robert Elswit, “Velvet Buzzsaw” struggles to merge the art world with its eventual horror elements. The characters, outside of Morf, don’t rise far above caricature, and Gilroy doesn’t have much to say about those characters beyond “the art world is shallow and fueled by greed.” This is the kind of movie where a character mistakes a bag of garbage for the latest creation by a famous artist. Ooh, what a burn!

Thinly-written and/or unlikable characters can be delicious fodder for a slasher film. Unfortunately, “Velvet Buzzsaw” lacks coherent suspense, and more of the movie’s kills play too comedic — sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. As it turns out, “ghost painter” doesn’t make for much of a menacing antagonist, or even an interesting one.

Gyllenhaal, thankfully, keeps “Velvet Buzzsaw” from being a total misfire. The supporting cast, which also includes Toni Collette and John Malkovich, doesn’t seem particularly engaged, and even Russo, so good in “Nightcrawler,” can’t wring much out of an underwritten character.

As long as Gilroy can continue to rope in Gyllenhaal, it will be interesting to follow the filmmaker through more projects. Right now he’s still chasing “Nightcrawler,” and “Velvet Buzzsaw” is several miles behind the pace car.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com