Reviews & Ratings for
Nocturnal Animals (2016)

This movie is a vast improvement on the book it was based on, it is much more piercing, intelligent and distilled with some brilliant additions. Cinematography is outstanding, movie is atmospheric and highly stylized, reminiscent of the best works of Hitchcock and Kubrick, with great attention to minute details - deliberate style that comes across as natural, but only on second examination is revealed as extremely deep and thoughtful.

The movie is concerned with Susan, an upper class woman married into wealth, that has since begun to crumble, who leads an empty life, that is falling apart, as she is unloved and deeply unhappy. She receives a novel, written by her ex-husband, who she cruelly abandoned as he was not able to provide the luxury she now lives in, being a "weakling" as a young aspiring writer, in estimation of her overbearing mother. The novel is about some scary rednecks destroying a man's family, after pushing their car off road. It turns out there are clear parallels between the redneck monsters in the story within a story and her actions, driven by her inner selfish monstrosity and cynical and rich mother but with the exact sophistication of an average redneck psychopath. Shattered to the core, after reading the book, she invites her ex to a dinner but is left waiting, and realizes sadly that she is never going to be forgiven, that hell is eternal and that her empty existence now is a karmic payback that she very well deserved for her past shallow choices and selfish crimes.

The movie portrays some of the issues that are in fact pretty common, and the movie is partly underappreciated due to not fitting in the woke-hysteria that was just starting to boil at the time of movie release. But objectively, it is one hell of a masterpiece of sophisticated storytelling, that also carries a message about consequences of the wrong choices people make in life.

From the opening credits to the highway of horror to the last scene where Susan (Amy Adams) is sitting in a restaurant, this movie is shockingly grotesque, horrifying, scary-as-hell (especially if you are a woman, which I am), and surprising in its motives. Superb performances, a star cast and good direction make this movie worth your while if you can get past the opening credits.