Nightmare Alley (2021) Review

Carnival Magic

Nightmare Alley (2021): 8 out of 10: An ambitious drifter, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), joins a traveling carnival and discovers that convincing people you can read their minds is considerably more profitable than honest work. Learning the trade from a veteran mentalist and his clairvoyant wife, Stan eventually takes his act into high society with fellow performer Molly (Rooney Mara). After all, wealthy people are just as gullible as carnival customers, and the accommodations are better.

His talents attract the attention of psychiatrist Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), whose professional understanding of human weakness opens up some intriguing business opportunities. Unfortunately, Stan has enough ambition for several men and sufficient judgment for considerably fewer.

The Good

The Good: Nightmare Alley pretends to be a rags to riches story. It is not. This sleight of hand, as great as anything you might find in a sideshow, is what gives the film its staying power. I often praise films for having flawed protagonists, but I have rarely seen one so delightfully flawed as Bradley Cooper’s Stanton Carlisle.

Cooper does the heavy lifting here and pulls off a fantastic performance. (Surprisingly overlooked during award season though Nightmare Alley itself garnered a best picture nomination.). The Art direction is fantastic, and it is wonderful to see a big budget noir like this.

I have not seen the original Nightmare Alley that this film is a remake of, but I look forward to it. A splendid story that tackles both poverty, mysticism nonsense, and psychiatry, of all things.

The Bad

The Bad: Guillermo del Toro seems to have all his actors in Nightmare Alley playing it low and close to the vest. (Except for Cate Blanchett, who got the memo, chewed it up, and did a spit take). This actually works to the advantage for such actors as Ron Perlman and William Defoe. I would not suggest, of course, either are prone to overacting mind you… cough… eye roll… cough. But both give excellent restrained performances, as does Cooper.

But then we have Rooney Mara. There is no chemistry between Mara and Cooper. On one level, that is okay. Cooper has various issues that would preclude him from having true feelings for anyone. On the other hand, however, it means the audience has no stakes on whether their relationship works out. I was more invested in that 14-year-old girl’s marriage to the drifter carney in Carnival Magic.

Mara’s issues are not just with her relationship with Cooper. She seems to project the charisma of one of the fancier settees later in the film. Rooney Mara comes across as furniture that occasionally talks.

The Ugly

The Ugly: When I heard Guillermo del Toro is making a movie that takes place in an old timey carnival thriller, my mind did not go directly to the noir Nightmare Alley (Which I had not even heard of before this film). No, it went to Tod Browning’s Freaks.

Knowing De Toro’s filmography with Guillermo del Toro with Cronos, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Hellboy, one could easily expect the freaks in the freak show turned up to eleven. Outside of Tim Burton, I cannot think of another director where the old timey carnival is so on brand.

So I am shocked how toned down the carnival is in Guillermo del Toro’s hands.

In Conclusion

In Conclusion: There is a plot twist at the end that would be hard pressed to surprise a five-year-old. (Hell, the title Nightmare Alley gives it away.). That said, the journey is well worth it. There is a lot of excellent media that makes good use of the sideshow. (Besides Freaks mentioned above, you have the Stephen King novel Thinner, the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and the HBO series Carnivale.) Nightmare Alley, though subdued, takes its place among the best takes on that storied subject.