It's 1939, shortly before World War II kicks off. Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) burns a wrapped-up corpse and his house down before leaving to seek his fortune. He takes a bus all the way to a traveling carnival. Owner Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe) hires him as a carny. Stanton meets Zeena and Pete (Toni Collette and David Strathairn), a psychic act who operate on a coded system. He turns their clairvoyance into his hustle when he bluffs a sheriff into not shutting them down. He then elopes with Molly (Rooney Mara), who electrocutes herself in her act, and we go to part two:
It's now 1941, and the War has come for the US. Stanton and Molly take their psychic act to Chicago. One night, he meets Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a psychiatrist who sees through his act. Nevertheless, she decides to join him in conning rich men. One such rich man is Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), who'd like nothing more than to meet the ghost of his first love. Pete previously warned Stanton about the unpredictability of "spook shows." But Stanton thinks he can manage it. He's wrong, of course.
Del Toro wrote the screenplay with his now-wife, Kim Morgan. They introduce Stanton right as he commits his arson. Whose body he burns is silently established in a flashback and verbally explained in the second half. He doesn't even speak his first line until about fifteen minutes in. That's when he tries to coax the carnival's geek out of hiding. What's a geek? The film answers that in gory detail. The first half sets up the tricks to Stanton's trade, which pay off spectacularly in the second half. Pay attention, as Clem also sets up Stanton's final fate.
Let's talk about Stanton in further detail. The whole film is his rags to riches to rags again story. Cooper's performance makes him perfectly charismatic and amoral. His conversations with the geek and his clients show that he has some humanity. Is it genuine humanity? I don't know, but I bought into his nice guy act. But he's still a con man with a hidden violent side. His fatal flaw is his overestimating himself, and it surely is fatal.
Now for a few more characters. Blanchett as Ritter is a formidable femme fatale. She spends the movie outconning the conman and the payoff is brutal. Jenkins as Grindle whose good nature gives way to his own violent side. Ms. Kimball (Mary Steenburgen), one of Stanton's clients, has the absolutely worst interpretation of a "seance" with her dead son. Molly is one of the few good characters in this bleak world. Perhaps the most sympathetic is the geek (Paul Anderson), a "feral beast" who is actually a drunken wreck of a man. It's also good to see Ron Perlman here, playing Bruno the Strongman.
Nightmare Alley's nightmarish world is conjured up by production designer Tamara Deverell and cinematographer Dan Laustsen. There are some creepy locales like the carnival, Ritter's office and the garden where the big spook job takes place. A haunted house truly looks like another dimension. Stanton dreaming himself inside his burning house, and his actual leaving that house, defines eerie. There's some strong makeup work for the carnival freaks & geek, as well as Stanton's evolving appearance. Nathan Johnson's score accompanies the creepiness rather well.
I bet you can tell that Nightmare Alley isn't family friendly. It's also rather long at 150 minutes. Despite some lulls, it's still a compelling story of an amoral man undone by his hubris. I can see why del Toro thought this nightmare was right up his alley. Anyone looking for a visually stunning thriller this holiday season will get their money's worth here. Anyone looking for something friendlier should look elsewhere in their neighborhood. I'm sure you've got options.
Maybe something rather obvious...
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