Nightmare Alley

 

DIRECTED BY-:
Guillermo del Toro
STARRING-:
Bradley Cooper
Rooney Mara
Cate Blanchett
YEAR OF RELEASE-:
2021
PREMISE-:
A grifter working his way up from low-ranking carnival worker to lauded psychic medium matches wits with a psychiatrist bent on exposing him.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

THE NEGATIVES-:

• A FEW CONTRIVANCES
• Molly ACCIDENTALLY sees Ritter’s sketch in Stan’s book.

• Stan is CONVENIENTLY able to get to Molly before she leaves at the station.

• The news about Judge Kimball and his wife’s murder-suicide is CONVENIENTLY heard by Ezra’s bodyguard just before things go haywire, giving Stan just enough time to escape.

• Ezra’s bodyguard LUCKILY misses the shots he takes at Stan.

• THE ENDING
• In the end, I would've preferred if Stan was actually shown trying his hand at various jobs and losing those jobs because of his alcoholism, before finally resorting to going back to a carnival and reluctantly accepting the role of a "geek". Although one can INFER that that's what WOULD'VE happened, it would've still been better if there were one or two scenes to firmly establish that fact, which would've made the ending all the more gratifying.

• When Stan gets rejected on his offer of doing a psychic act, the film could've done a better job at explaining WHY mentalism wasn't still a "sensation" and in "high demand". This could've been easily fixed with a few lines of dialogue which implied that BECAUSE a fake psychic (referring to Stan) recently got exposed in Buffalo, the public hates seeing psychics on stage. This fix, in my opinion, would have been much more satisfying than simply calling mentalism "too old fashioned". 

THE POSITIVES-:

• The performances by everyone in the cast were excellent.

• The cinematography and set designs were haunting yet extremely beautiful, something that is perfectly congruous with the thematic undertones of the film. 

• The dialogues and characters were well written. Although the characters weren't complex, their motivations and arcs made sense and were engaging to explore.

• The music, though not particularly exceptional, worked very well with the tone of the screenplay.

RATING -: 7/10