Entertainment
All 4 Movies Directed by David Robert Mitchell, Ranked
You cannot properly summarize David Robert Mitchell’s filmography to date, since each one tackles a different genre or two, and then all of them have their own ideas about how to do weird things with those genres. His directorial debut was in 2010, and was kind of a weird dramedy a bit like Dazed and Confused, but not quite as strong or coherent. Then, 2014 is the movie for which he made a name for himself, mainly as a horror filmmaker, yet then he didn’t stick with horror for long, and made something that got very messy and head-spinning in 2018. Eight years passed, and he’s now returned with a fairly large-scale (almost blockbuster) sort of movie that J.J. Abrams seems to be getting a lot of attention for, even if Abrams is only there, officially, in a co-producing role. It’s a bit Abrams-esque, which is to say it’s also a bit Spielberg-esque, but more on that specific film shortly.
There are only four movies here, sure, but they’re all strange and there are a fair few things to talk about when it comes to each. Three are probably good, or maybe it’s more the case that two are good, and one’s a bit misunderstood. As for the fourth… it’s baffling and maybe kind of amateurish, but somehow in a weirdly compelling way, too. If you want movies you don’t usually see, David Robert Mitchell might be your guy, even if he is always, admittedly, mixing and matching individual elements that do sometimes feel familiar. His four feature films to date are ranked below, starting with the one that’s a bit of an interesting mess, and ending with the one that still feels like the closest he’s come to making a full-on classic.
4
‘The Myth of the American Sleepover’ (2010)
Dazed and Confused was mentioned before as something that feels a little in line with David Robert Mitchell’s first movie: The Myth of the American Sleepover. The word “Myth” being in the title here feels like it does some heavy-lifting, supporting the argument that this is more than just a coming-of-age dramedy, and something that’s instead dreamlike or even a bit fantastical. It’s an avant-garde kind of coming-of-age movie, or it’s a fairly sloppily put-together attempt at making another coming-of-age dramedy that might have a chance at scratching the same itch as something like Dazed and Confused, or the other hang-out movies Richard Linklater’s directed.
It’s hard to know whether it’s just basic, or whether there’s some extra layer to the basic and amateurish qualities.
In The Myth of the American Sleepover, the teenagers feel like they’re hanging out in purgatory. The drama’s rarely dramatic, the crushes and romances scarcely passionate, and the comedy simply not there at all, to the point where one starts to wonder whether there’s been some massive era in this being labeled as a dramedy. It’s Mitchell’s smallest movie, and it looks like the simplest on the surface, so you return to it after having seen any combination of the other three, expecting something gentler and more basic, and nope. Well, it might be more basic. It’s hard to know whether it’s just basic, or whether there’s some extra layer to the basic and amateurish qualities, and so what you’re actually seeing is a more arthouse take on (or even an underhanded parody of) “the summer’s winding down” style coming-of-age movies. What a trip, and what a snooze, all at the same time.
3
‘The End of Oak Street’ (2026)
The cinematic world is not dominated by dinosaurs in the way it arguably should be, because you’ve got Jurassic Park, which towers over everything critically and commercially, and then you’ve got the Jurassic Park sequels, which tower over things not so much critically, but usually commercially. It felt as though there was something of a monopoly on big-budget dinosaur movies, so it’s nice when something like The End of Oak Street comes along and shows that dinosaurs don’t need direct attachment to Steven Spielberg’s original film/series to work. Of course, The End of Oak Street owes debts to Spielberg’s filmography in other ways. It doesn’t take place in that world, and the setting of 1982 appears to be a way to get out of any need for characters to mention “This is like that movie, Jurassic Park,” but some scenes do pay serious homage to the first two Jurassic Park movies. The premise also takes what the premise of Jurassic World Dominion should’ve been, and has more fun with it.
That film promised dinosaurs freed at last, and rampaging all over the world. Actual exciting scenes with dinosaurs in real-world locations proved minimal. With The End of Oak Street, you only get a small chunk of humanity thrown back in time, but many of the set pieces do resonate the way the set pieces in a hypothetically better Jurassic World Dominion might’ve. Beyond Jurassic Park, you’ve got some homages to Poltergeist (which Spielberg produced, and maybe ghost-directed, according to some), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, and even some Raiders of the Lost Ark (though Indy never had to deal with a snake quite this big). Parts of The End of Oak Street also feel bloodier and a little more intense than you might expect, and the end of The End of Oak Street… it’s interesting. Certain things about it set in long after the movie’s over, so it’s hard to feel sure about where it all ends up. But the ride there’s a fun one, and Anne Hathaway continues to battle Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Tom Holland in the competition of “Who Does 2026 at the Movies Belong to?”
2
‘Under the Silver Lake’ (2018)
While there aren’t really ways to break down just what happens in Under the Silver Lake, there are things to compare it to. It’s less being like, “Hey, the movie is about this happening, and if you like movies where that happens, maybe check it out.” It’s more like, “Uh, this mess of a film takes messy inspiration from the best of the messes, since it’s got the fingerprints of someone who wants to be Thomas Pynchon all over it, and then you throw in a bit of David Lynch fanaticism, and also, remember Southland Tales? This movie kind of feels like Southland Tales.” You say all that, and potential watchers are either clutching a bottle of pepper spray, or starting to back away very slowly, or maybe they’re just flat out running elsewhere. Look, Under the Silver Lake is not their kind of movie. It’s probably not your kind of movie. Whose kind of movie even is this?
Uh, Under the Silver Lake looks pretty good. Visually, David Robert Mitchell seemed to know what he was doing, and the color and style of it all being reminiscent of some works by David Lynch… like, that’s pretty high praise. As for Pynchon, it’s about a guy stumbling around, trying to uncover something, and learning less about all sorts of conspiracies, shady figures, and underground societies the more he tries to interact with them. It’s a bit Inherent Vice, but with the comedy stripped away, making it arguably more like The Crying of Lot 49, but a bit longer and more complex, so throw in a bit of V into the mix, too. Maybe there are other postmodern authors Mitchell’s pulling from, too. Anyway, very little of this movie makes any kind of sense in the way sense is usually defined/understood, but it’s worth a watch for the things it does right stylistically, and for the undeniably daring places it’s also very confident to barge into throughout.
1
‘It Follows’ (2014)
The high-concept premise is the first thing that It Follows really has going for it, and then the second thing is the fact that said premise is executed incredibly well. Whatever David Robert Mitchell was trying to do in The Myth of the American Sleepover (it remains a mythtery), he’d really worked out his whole style and what to do with It Follows. This is his most intense stab at the horror genre, with the outlandish premise made to work here involving a sexually transmitted disease that is a lot more deadly (in the literal sense) than the more “normal” ones. If you get infected, you’re stalked by some kind of very slow but also very deadly creature, and the only way – at least it seems, initially – to get the target off you is by having sexual intercourse with someone else, and then the creature will pursue them.
But the paranoia remains, because once the person they want is dead, the creature will go back to the next person in the chain. The whole movie has some young people frantically trying to work all this out, all the while worrying about how long they can keep fleeing – and keep track of – the monster that’s after them. Metaphorically… well, it’s obvious what it’s about. The subtext becomes the text here, or maybe the subtext/text becomes the literal villain. It Follows makes all this work, boasts a handful of genuinely terrifying sequences, looks unique on an atmospheric front, and feels clever as regards the mythology and unique central monster it builds up. It’s one of the best psychological thriller/horror/mystery films of the century so far, and certainly feels like David Robert Mitchell’s single strongest filmmaking effort to date.
It Follows
- Release Date
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March 27, 2015
- Runtime
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101 minutes
- Director
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David Robert Mitchell
- Writers
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David Robert Mitchell
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