Nightcrawler Review
What’s the dream footage to lead local morning news? A screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut, of course.
That’s according to unscrupulous news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo). Her world is controlled by ratings which are in turn driven by suburban fear mongering and perverse images of death and violence. Nightcrawler takes us into a depraved nocturnal journalistic underground where freelance auteurs ambulance chase the night away in hopes of filming that big scoop. We’re told that “if it bleeds, it leads.”
In a time when ISIS beheadings dominate the news, Nightcrawler appears to be an opportune satire of the dark scopophilia that excites the modern masses. Thematically, the film lies in a tantalising spot between the prescient, dystopian modernity of J.G. Ballard’s novels, most notably Crash, and Hitchcock’s obsessive voyeurism. However, despite the refreshing take on current events, Nightcrawler isn’t about morally dubious news at all.
It’s about Jake Gyllenhaal. More specifically, it’s about the character he brings to life: Louis Bloom…read the rest at Movie Fail here