Nocturnal Animals is your 2 story merger. One story is great. The other is mediocre. Fortunately, the good story takes the majority of the running time, so the movie works more often than it doesn’t. I’m sorry Amy Adams, but your existential crises in a beautiful house with unlimited resources pales in comparison to Jake Gyllenhaal’s nightmarish trip through the desert.
Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is an art gallery owner in Los Angeles in a loveless marriage with her husband Hutton (Armie Hammer). Out of the blue, she receives a book from her ex husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). The story features a husband (also Gyllenhaal), his wife (Isla Fisher), and his daughter (Ellie Bamber) accosted by a psychopathic West Texas hick (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and the sheriff (Michael Shannon) that helps hunt them down. Edward dedicates the book to Susan, who starts merging the abduction story with her own life with Edward.
The thriller story makes Nocturnal Animals watchable. Holy crap, is this story tense and scary. Aaron Taylor-Johnson hasn’t been this good since Kick-Ass, and this is probably going to be one of his best performances. Johnson is SO creepy as a loose cannon local from West Texas: just the worst type of person a family would want to run afoul of in the middle of nowhere. Michael Shannon is also (obviously) excellent as the near-retirement cop, with his matter of factness and calm demeanor pairing nicely with the traumatized Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal, again, proves his talent as the glue to this story; the man has to inhabit a mellow dad, a traumatized victim, and a growing revenge obsessed avenger with half the screen time of a normal story. Though Nocturnal Animals isn’t really about him, Gyllenhaal makes his voice heard and takes over the movie though sheer talent.
Now, imagine how depressing it is as I watch this great tense Western thriller stop, only to be sent to vapid Los Angeles and Amy Adams dealing with her personal issues like a rich annoying mother and a soulless unfaithful husband. This movie puts Adams’s story on equal footing by placing Gyllenhaal in it as well, playing double duty as her ex husband, putting some “mystery” into the story about what could be the real story. However, Adams character is so shallow I was left supremely empty by any part she played in the tale. It’s not a fault of the actress, who is fine, but a life and death revenge tale just carries infinitely more weight that Amy Adams feeling sorry for herself because of her poor choices. Though Adams’s house is gorgeous, Nocturnal Animals grinds to a halt when it cuts to her exasperating reading a book.
Nocturnal Animals feels more like a missed opportunity. After crafting a great in-story story, all Tom Ford had to do was create the filling surrounding the story. Maybe one more pass with the characters would have made the movie more interesting, but as is, it feels frustratingly mediocre. Except Jake Gyllenhaal. That guy needs to work more, Hollywood.