Nightmare Alley

Take a trip down Nightmare Alley for an early contender for the end of year tally up.

The latest from Guillermo del Toro, and following a four year wait after his Oscar win for The Shape Of Water, is a suitably creepy and fantastical adaptation of the 1946 novel following the rise and fall of a mysterious drifter-type character who falls in with a carnival troupe in 1930’s America and learns to be a psychic and mesmerist.

It’s an absolutely riveting story set in a time period and setting which is always ripe for quality filmmaking. The general theme of how far to push the line of illusion is thought-provoking and leads to some shocking moments as the plot unravels.

del Toro presents the story in linear fashion which enhances the journey you take with Bradley Cooper’s lead character: Stan Carlisle. It is entirely novelistic, even fading out at certain points which gives the feel of a chapter ending. It’s long as well, sprawling across two and a half hours but not feeling indulgent and earning its runtime.

It’s stacked with an incredible cast on top form but it is Cooper who is likely to receive awards nom’s. It’s a performance that requires plenty of layers, from mute blank canvas to mesmeric showman and everything in between. He tows the line perfectly between being the audience’s conduit and therefore ‘hero’ whilst, occasionally, being very anti-heroic and we go with him on that journey the whole way through.

It was always going to be a pretty film but there’s some truly stunning imagery here as well and, whilst thoroughly rooted in the ‘real’, unlike a lot of the Director’s other output, there’s always the hint of something fantastical around the corner and it nicely keeps the tension as it goes.

Whilst the key set pieces are all brilliant there are a few plot twists to get you there that feel a little unearned or strange but these can be forgiven, especially considering the film follows the text. There’s also a mysterious past, hinted at and shown in part, but perhaps not quite as much as you’d expect in a film of this length. I’d perhaps use a film like Shutter Island to compare with anyone wanting to know why Nightmare Alley isn’t quite a full 5 star film. Scorsese’s film follows a similar sort of psychological thriller plot but drops the reveals and fills the backstory in just that little bit better.

Having said that though this is still a fantastic movie; twisted, enthralling and appropriately mesmeric.

4 stars ****