Review of Nightmare Alley (2021) by Marinomele — 07 Apr 2022

4.5/10.

This movie looks GOOD and the actors are truly working some magic here, I was mesmerized by all of the ambiance here. Only a couple of hiccups pacing-wise, but that's due to how rich of events this movie is.

But I'm sorry, the ending - despite being obvious - was a steamy piece of CRAP.

Ending this mostly flat movie with some authorial autoerotism. And this is EXACTLY why people like it.

[SPOILERS AHEAD].

This protagonist - stubborn, ambitious, bright, smart, and talented... Accepts being filled with drugs so much to lose all of his humanity becoming a "beast-man". When he already saw what disgraceful end those poor men are bound to suffer?

This kind of change of heart happens solely because the script demands it. Such a change would've needed much more crafting.

As it is it's so off-character, it's just Del Toro giving himself an ego-handjob.

Character-wise, it would've made much more sense for the protagonist to just pretend on drinking the drug. Implying he's still as it was years ago, and foreshadowing he wants to use yet another circus as a career springboard.

I can see parallelism with "Les Miserables" here, but let's leave this 'class-predestination theme to the self-entitled-wisdom of nobles from the '800s.

Nowadays, we can call this narrative by name: narrative crap.