Film Review: Nightmare Alley (2021)

Coming off of a Best Picture win with The Shape of Water, the interest in what filmmaker Guillermo del Toro would do next and finally, that project has been realized as Nightmare Alley. Coming as the newest adaptation of the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham. Which itself has already been adapted in 1947 by Edmund Goulding.

The film opens on a scene of Stanton “Stan” Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) burning a house to a floor, getting onto a bus, and finding himself at a local carnival where he gets a job as a carny. Nightmare Alley presents a mystery box of past demons and crafted illusions. As the character and past of Carlisle bleeds into the world around him as he attempts to find his way to the top.

Being a project from Guillermo del Toro, it should go without saying that the production design and world of Nightmare Alley is one of its largest highlights. Absolutely stunning with a real sense of grit and physicality, the carnival aesthetic of the film is possibly the best this location has ever seen.

Constantly muddy and gross with only scattered visuals of warmth and cleanliness, the characters and their schemes feel perfectly in line with the physical world around them. With del Toro wisely using more grounded visuals throughout the feature, with only a handful of more fantastical design. Such as a pickled one-eyed baby kept in a jar that keeps returning throughout the film’s runtime.

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This, however, only gives mention to really half of the film’s identity. In an incredibly polarizing manner, the film splits itself in two with a major time jump that sends the focus out of the circus and into Chicago. Here Carlisle meets with a psychologist named Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) who wants to understand him deeper.

While it is hard to point to either of these individual halves as being bad, they are clearly not beneficial to each other. With the film losing nearly all sense of momentum or follow-through with this jump. Largely because of the film’s presentation of its story as a sort of mystery box that will all come together into something deeper, the film creates expectations that it will never meet.

The story of Nightmare Alley is not some layered puzzle or engrossing mystery. It is a rather straightforward character study built with a foundation of tragedy and suffering. The 1947 feature highlighted this well with a continued focus on the pain within Carlisle in a simple yet authentic sense. The film didn’t give all the answers at once, but it never tried to drag the story out into something bigger.

The 2021 version does which feels like the root of many of its issues. From an unsatisfying viewing experience to a shocking 150-minute runtime, Nightmare Alley feels like it completely loses grasp of its own identity and purpose. In this sense, the film feels unique in del Toro’s directorial filmography, and falls more in line with the work he has done as a producer recently.

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Since The Shape of Water, del Toro has helped produce a number of films, including Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Antlers, that clearly hold pieces of del Toro’s influence, especially on a technical level. Without having the same craft of del Toro’s directorial outings. Nightmare Alley fits into this identity perfectly. So to see that del Toro also served as director for the project does feel somewhat disappointing.

This isn’t to say that everything is bad that is added, as there are a few highlights specifically with the film’s analysis on truth. The presence of Cate Blanchett within the film’s second half is undeniably engrossing. And her psychological battles with Bradley Cooper are incredibly engaging and tactical. Her character specifically also opens the door to the film’s deeper questions. Actors like Willem Dafoe and Toni Collette also do a truly wonderful job giving faces and personalities to this world.

Nightmare Alley asks where the line of fictional performance and true talent lays. This is an interesting pondering, especially when it comes to looking at modern psychology. Is Cate Blanchett any different than Bradley Cooper deep down? While one absolutely could feel uneasy about the morals of the film – as it questions things like therapy – the movie overall feels void of enough judgment to truly ever become problematic with this conversation.

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It also should be noted that while Cooper fails overall to impress in the feature, the final scene he gives is absolutely spectacular and easily creates one of the most memorable moments in cinema this year. It offers a final plateau for the character of Carlisle, who ultimately is the central purpose of the entire feature. And while some might prefer the 1947 film’s ending, which continues past the point where this film ends, this feels more rewarding and fitting for the style of this version.

While there are clear highlights of del Toro’s Nightmare Alley that help hold the film together as being far from a disaster, the feature overall is a disappointment from Guillermo del Toro, that feels messy and misguided. Trying to elevate a focused character study into something far more poignant and deep is an endeavor that falls shockingly flat. Sometimes the simpler path is the better, and while no one can take away what the film accomplishes on a technical level, the narrative found within Nightmare Alley ultimately curses itself to a life of unfulfillment.