Review: Nightcrawler (2014)

Somehow, Nightcrawler just fell under my radar when it came out last year. I tend to avoid the cinema during October, I’m not a horror fan at all and if the screens aren’t full of horror films, they’re playing horror trailers! I’m just like ‘I came to watch Horrible Bosses 2*, why am I seeing trailers for Annabelle**?!. By the time I’d heard of Nightcrawler and knew what it was about, it had finished at the cinema. Pants! Thankfully, I got my hands on a copy in time for Jenna staying over for film night! I totally missed this at the cinema, I saw it on the side of a bus in December and got all excited until I noticed that it said October waaah!!

In Nightcrawler, a shockingly thin Jake Gyllenhaal plays the role of Lou Bloom, a guy desperate for a job who finds himself making a living out of filming horrific car crashes and crimes and then selling the footage to the news. Lou hires himself an apprentice, Rick (Riz Ahmed) to listen to the police radio and give directions to Lou. What starts out as already unsettling takes continuous turns for the worst as Lou’s greed for money grows.

I would blindly follow Jake Gyllenhaal into any film he made, but I would have watched this no matter who was the lead actor. The plot just sounded that good. In the beginning I felt sort of sorry for Lou, despite his joblessness he had the drive and the cheeky charisma to succeed, but it’s certainly unsettling to realise that this world that Lou finds himself in happens all the time in the real world.  The thought of this is terrifying, excuse me while I go and lock my front door!!

This is the kind of role that Jake Gyllenhaal just owns. He was brilliant in Donnie Darko, and I’ll happily watch any kind of thriller if he’s involved. Lou’s relationship with Rick was fascinating to watch as Lou would make a transition from Rick’s friendly and enthusiastic mentor to just completely losing it within a heartbeat. He was truly scary!  This is probably one of the best roles I have seen JG in, he owned it completely.  It was one of those roles where you forget who the actor is because you are just totally sold on the character.  Rene Russo really shone to me as well, the scenes of those two together were electric!

I found myself completely hooked and on edge throughout the whole film, as Lou crossed the line between a morally grey area to downright wrong. There’s a shot of Lou right at the very end of the film, and I won’t spoil it for you, but there’s something you spot that was in another scene ages before, and it suddenly dawns on you that even though you’ve seen Lou do some terrible things, there was so much more that he did that we as the audience never got to see.

I found this really entertaining (even if I have a few naps throughout oops!) and scary to be fair, I found some of the scenes quite disturbing and uncomfortable, was that just me?  The fact that people out there actually do this and potentially set up these situations and cause serious accidents and even deaths.  

My face at the very end was a mixture of shock and a grin at how awesome the whole thing was. There were a few quiet moments where not much happened but other than that, this would have been in my Top 2014 films for sure! Those moments were the odd ones where I had a little doze! ;-)

I don't think I thought as much as this as Allie (maybe because of my mini-naps!!) but I definitely enjoyed it and Gyllenhaal was at his best.

*It probably wasn’t Horrible Bosses

**Also probably not Annabelle. More likely the goat in the shower mobile phone advert. Was it EE or 3?