https://collider.com/under-the-silver-lake-andrew-garfield-a24/

Interesting to compare Bryant's approach to what you got in Danilo Castro's essay on "Stoner Noir" in the last NC. Bryant may oversell the film, but he does connect some dots that Castro either ignored or never considered in his race to create a tenuous (and ultimately untenable) hybrid category.

The sub-genre they might be looking for is "paint-yourself-into-a-narrative-corner noir," which could use some fleshing out in order to create a framework for examining cross-era examples of films that do that. I don't think Bryant would agree that UNDER THE SILVER LAKE does this, but the lack of a coherent, compelling ending is not unique to it (particularly in recent years). Sometimes "narrative collapse" in the ending of a noir/neo-noir is an ironic commentary on both form and content: neither Bryant nor Castro really engage with that idea, and how it might (or might not) apply to UNDER THE SILVER LAKE.

Bryant's essay starts slowly, but it picks up steam rapidly: an interesting, if somewhat elliptcially argued perspective.