Initally, Nightmare Alley’s premise intrigued me. A master of strange but loving imagery, Guillermo del Toro, making a film noir set around circus performers? Hell yeah! With del Toro at the helm, the remake is a perfectly fine noir that looks great and has some suspense here and there, but sadly leaves something to be desired by the end. It’s rarely boring, but it’s also rarely captivating…just simply entertaining for the most part.
For almost all of you unfamiliar with the 1946 movie/novel, Nightmare Alley follows Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a nomad getting away from his horrible past life. He stumbles upon a traveling circus run by Clem (Willem Dafoe), who recruits him for manual labor. Stan proves perfect for the circus life, inserting himself into Madame Zeena’s (Toni Collette) mind reading act and Molly Cahill’s (Rooney Mara) electricity stunts. Everyone becomes enamored with Stan, so much so he takes his personal act on the road, attracting the attention of famous psychiatrist Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), curious about the new hotshot in town.
del Toro is more faithful to the novel than the movie, centering the story around Carlisle. I forgot del Toro had tried this period piece noir once before, Crimson Peak, which was a mixed bag. With Nightmare Alley, del Toro sticks to the story for the most part, which was probably awesome in 1946 but comes across a tad stale here. I was surprised how predictable this movie was. Now, maybe that’s because del Toro wants the movie to be about something else, but most of the best scenes revolve around the attempts to scare the audience, not hit us emotionally. As such, the movie is less than the sum of its parts, leaving you entertained a lot, but pretty empty and forgettable by the movie’s end.
But like I said, it’s not all bad; when you have a talented director like Guillermo del Toro, there’s bound to be a lot of amazing stuff inside of your movie. The sets and production look stupendous, really making you feel like you’re at a 1940s circus, a creepy psychiatrist office, or an icy rich person’s garden. del Toro is drawn to macabre beautiful imagery, and that’s certainly on display here as we get long looks at strange circus performers or jarred chrildren’s corpses with 3 eyeballs in period specific costuming. The Bradley Cooper casting is questionable, but everyone else in del Toro’s movie really brings it and makes the movie better, specifically Cate Blanchett and Richard Jenkins nail the film noir role they were cast for, and David Strathairn gives a lot of pathos to a small part. Every 20-30 minutes, del Toro stages a wonderfully crafted scene too using the supporting cast and fascinating sets/imagery, reminding you of the potential of Nightmare Alley’s script to hit some big high notes.
Nightmare Alley was going for a Shape of Water like groundswell, but settles for something solid. But del Toro’s prodigious talent will not be disappointed for long. He just has to write an original script with collaboration from the spirits he converses with on a regular basis. No, really, I met him once and he really believes in those supernatural forces, which I’m certain help provide him supernatural gifts of storytelling!