10 More Great Horror Movies That Are Ugly On Purpose

Art world satire Velvet Buzzsaw boasts an expansive cast, a decent budget, some pretty potent ideas, and both the director and star of runaway indie sensation Nightcrawler - Dan Gilroy and Jake Gyllenhaal - and yet it manages to be pretty ugly. But maybe that’s the point.

The film revolves around a series of paintings that enter the orbit of a bisexual LA art critic (Gyllanhaal's Morf) and his circle of snobs, curators, pretentious artists, and hangers-on. But the works belong to deceased artist Vetril Dease, and while the furore surrounding his undiscovered talent grows and grows, so do the sinister and deadly happenings that seem to occur in the paintings' presence.

The artwork that these people fawn over is at best benign and, at worst, pretty hideous. While this would be commentary enough, the new paintings are a special kind of ugly, featuring deformed people that reflect the art critics’ world. Yet that’s far from where it ends.

In contrast to the high art setup and setting, the monstrous apparitions emerging from the paintings are hideous, the paint that infects the critics is literally 2D, and the kills are sloppy, bloody, and really at odds with the primary aesthetics of the world the violence is entering. Velvet Buzzsaw's satire may not be as sharp and considered as in other recent hits like Ruben Östlund's The Square, or Todd Field's Tár, but it offers a visual-thematic undertaking all of its own.