“Nightcrawler” might not provide the kind of creepy-crawly terror you might expect from its name this Halloween season, but the thriller still finds a way to provide more than adequate horror and shock to the audience’s psyche.
“Nightcrawler” follows smooth-talking and hyper-analytical Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) in his search for a job in Los Angeles. From the very beginning, when Lou is caught stealing chain-link fence from a restricted area and — after a smiling conversation with the security officer who caught him — mugs the officer to both escape and steal the officer’s watch, the audience starts to suspect there’s something strange and dangerous about him.
This suspicion only grows when he pulls over to watch the aftermath of a deadly car crash up-close. During this excursion, Lou sees a cameraman filming the scene and discovers the footage will be sold to local news TV stations. When the cameraman refuses to hire him, Lou resolves to learn the trade of “Nightcrawling” for himself.
Eventually, by working with Nina Romina (Rene Russo, “Thor”), a TV news manager, and Rick, an assistant he hires, Lou carves out his own niche filming crimes and their aftermath and selling his footage to a local TV station for a significant profit.
In his quest for better footage and a higher payoff, Lou’s behavior becomes increasingly risky and dangerous, until finally he weaves a tangled web of activities that are both less than moral and less than legal. While at first it seems he will not be able to escape the web he weaves, it becomes clear that the strange and dangerous Lou the audience has been leery of from the beginning still has a few terrible tricks still up his sleeve.
Paralleling Lou’s story are the themes of increasing urban crime, the power of the media, and our society’s obsession with devastation.
Truly fantastic acting by Gyllenhaal carries the movie throughout; his ability to create a very nuanced character through simple facial expressions and methods of talking demonstrate his outstanding acting ability. Unique direction choices such as incorporating drab colors, distinctive metropolis shots of downtown LA and omitting explicit storytelling to allow the audience to draw their own conclusions also add depth and excellence to the film.
“Nightcrawler” is the kind of film that grabs the audience from the beginning, takes off running, and doesn’t let go until the bitter end. While the ending certainly does not provide the viewer with catharsis of any kind, it is perhaps this bitter and lingering aftertaste that gives the film its strength.
