Nightmare Alley – a dark morality tale that doesn’t pull its punches

GUILLERMO del Toro is a filmmaker known for his fascination with the supernatural and the bizarre, more specifically the relationship between these phenomena and the real world. He humanises fantastical monsters and contrasts them with the brutality that seemingly normal people are capable of.

Nightmare Alley drops any overt pretence of the otherworldly – though there are some moments that hint in that direction – as he digs deep into human ugliness.

In many ways, it is a look into the underbelly of the American Dream – that without any money or a name, someone can work hard enough and make something of themselves. On the other side of the coin, anyone can trick and lie their way to the top and be just as successful.

Set in the early 1940s, Nightmare Alley starts off with Bradley Cooper – who goes by the name Stanton Carlisle, an invented name if there ever was one – a mysterious drifter who stumbles onto a carnival out in the middle of nowhere. He gets a job doing some labour for the naturally nefarious Willem Dafoe, who plays Clem, the proprietor of the place, and slowly but surely becomes part of this community of outcasts and misfits.

Toni Collette and David Strathairn play Zeena the Seer and her assistant/partner Pete, a couple who have honed the art of mentalism. Their act involves reading the minds of people in the crowd and uncovering their deep, dark secrets. Sometimes they even speak to a dead loved one related to an audience member.

Of course, none of it is true, as they use a lot of tricks and simple intuition to read and manipulate people. It also requires confidence and more importantly, being able to believe one’s own lies.

The couple take a shine to Stanton and educate him in their ways. He quickly learns from them how to fool audiences into believing they have supernatural powers. He soon shows himself to be equally skilled if not more so as a mentalist in his own right.

Stanton also learns about the dark underbelly of the carnival from Clem. Not too far beneath the surface – which is already unsettling – is an ocean of ugliness that is easy to ignore if you look the other way.

At the same time, he begins to fall in love with Rooney Mara’s Molly – whose carnival act involves surviving electric currents – and begins plotting his next step. Mara does a lot with a relatively simple character, able to adeptly play up her innocence but never coming off as weak.

The carnival location is itself its own character, and according to the behind-the-scenes, was shot mostly on a real set. There’s something off about the place, and because it is out in the middle of nowhere, it is almost as if it occupies its own plane of existence – almost like a purgatory for the misbegotten.

However, the carnival is only half of Nightmare Alley, as the second part jumps forward a couple of years to a different locale with a different atmosphere. It’s colder, literally, as we encounter a different set of characters who want something from Stanton. The themes of the movie come into the fore when we contrast where he started off to where he is now.

Fitting with the neo-noir trappings of the movie, Cate Blanchett plays a perfect femme fatale – a devious character that you don’t want to trust but is too attractive and arresting to ignore. She gives the film a different energy and takes Cooper out of his comfort zone.

Cooper himself has played dark characters before, but here he has a level of menace that he hasn’t really shown before. It’s almost rare in this day and age for a movie star to portray someone so seemingly unsympathetic. There is a charisma to Stanton, but it’s the kind that fits someone with darker motivations.

A lot of the movie is driven by a sense of mystery, as we want to know what makes Stanton tick. For a lot of the runtime, especially in the first half, we as an audience don’t really know where the movie is headed as the story builds. For those used to propulsive narratives or tight plots, Nightmare Alley can be a bit meandering. It does drag at points – at 2 hours and 30 minutes, it could have definitely used some tightening.

The film is called Nightmare Alley, so you obviously shouldn’t be expecting an upbeat movie, however as a dark morality tale, it doesn’t pull its punches. In many ways, it is one of del Toro’s more subdued films, though he knows when to turn up the heat. There is a build-up of tension that is released in a satisfying conclusion. – The Vibes, January 14, 2022

Nightmare Alley is playing exclusively in TGV Cinemas starting today