Nightcrawler

“Nightcrawler” is a movie that makes you feel icky inside. You don’t feel good watching the main character do the gross things he does. You will want to turn away, wince, or, depending on your temperament and squeamishness, break your TV. But you don’t. Because “Nightcrawler” is also an engaging, tense, and well shot movie that holds your attention and makes you want to know what happens next.

The movie is Dan Gilroy’s first and best directorial outing, and it stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom, an obsessive, hard-working, misanthropic sociopath. He has a single-minded focus on becoming “successful”. Essentially, he’s an American dreamer. He doesn’t care what kind of work he does, as long as it gives him drive and purpose. One night in Los Angeles, where the story takes place, he drives past a car wreck and pulls over to the side of the highway. A news crew arrives and shoots footage for local TV. Louis has his profession: he will become a nightcrawler, a cameraperson who scours late night LA for urban crime flexing its wings in suburban areas to film and sell to local stations.

Bloom’s arc is predictable, to say the least: he takes more and more drastic steps to get better and better footage, and spirals out of control. Gilroy has obviously seen “Taxi Driver” and “American Psycho”, both of which make good comparisons to “Nightcrawler”. Travis Bickle, like Bloom, is an anti-hero who gets caught up in a big city’s seedy underworld. And like Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho”, Bloom is a sociopath who manages to function and be successful in a capitalistic system. No wonder his last name also starts with a “B”.

More than either of those two films, “Nightcrawler” is a straightforward narrative, a slow but effective crescendo that culminates in one of the most unsettling finales I’ve ever seen. But there are so many great moments along the ride that give just as much pause and as many chills as the finale.

Bloom is a creepy protagonist, and Jake Gyllenhaal does an eerie job at making him as scary as possible. Maybe not as deep as Bickle or Bateman, but certainly more terrifying. There are two shots in particular that are sure to scare the living daylights out of a casual onlooker. One, a shot of Bloom’s camera that tilts down onto his face, and another, a shot of a primal scream into a mirror. In that image, Gyllenhaal becomes a monster incarnate.

The cinematography and shot-to-shot editing aren’t anything to write home about, but the pacing is good, and the lighting of a nighttime Los Angeles provides a great color palette to the film, reminiscent of LA-based movies like “Drive” and “Collateral”. The yellows in particular evoke both the glare of street lamps (or TV cameras), and the incomparable greed demonstrated by our strapping young protagonist and the TV people he works for.

“Nightcrawler” certainly indicts local media for focusing on suburban crime against white people and not giving a damn about minorities. It also indicts us, the viewers, for revelling in the violence on our television screens.

There is another great scene in “Nightcrawler”, a sequence unfolding at a Mexican restaurant, that is filled with unbearable suspense. This is generated because we only see the restaraunt from the perspective of Bloom and his partner (a very good Riz Ahmed). It is a sweat-inducing scene, where you can practically taste the tension as you wait for violence to break out. You are worried about lives, yes, but you are also worried about the unethical actions of our lead characters. The tension mounts until it explodes, and, suffice it to say, the next sequence is not quite as good as the quieter scene.

“Nightcrawler” borrows from other films, yes. It is predictable, yes. There might even be one too many manipulative moments, yes. However, that doesn’t matter, because Jake Gyllenhaal is electrifying to watch, there are so many small, great moments that give you goosebumps, and the film has a relevant message that should be heeded. “Nightcrawler” will crawl into your body, and infest your cells, remaining in your system to haunt you for a longtime afterwards.

{★★★☆}