“If you displease the right people, the world closes in on you very, very fast,” Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) cautions her new partner in crime, mentalist Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper). In true film noir fashion, it’s a lesson Stan fails to take to heart in Guillermo del Toro’s latest film “Nightmare Alley.” It’s also one of the few moments in del Toro’s film, co-written with Kim Morgan and adapted from William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel of the same name, that’s as sharp as those found in the classics from the genre.
From the film’s first frames, del Toro and cinematographer Dan Laustsen coat everything with a dingy, saturated haze. They want you to know things are bleak. This grim tone is further set by the howling winds that permeate through the opening sequence as Stan drags a body across a dusty floor, sets the room ablaze, and heads off through a wheat field, leaving the Hopper-esque house to burn to the ground. Here we get a glimpse of what’s to come many times throughout the film: lousy CGI. The flames are flat, an almost monotone orange. They crackle — “The Shape of Water” sound designer Nathan Robitaille‘s attention to detail is indeed a standout of the production —but they have no weight, no real fury.
From here, we follow Stan on his journey to a decrepit rundown carnival, where he becomes mesmerized by a live geek act. Robitaille makes sure you hear that chicken’s neck crack as the blood oozes a deep crimson. Del Toro had stated this would be “Double R,” and gore is plentiful in the film’s more violent sequences peppered throughout, often with Cam McLauchlin’s sharp edits cutting just a millisecond before the worst violence erupts, forcing the images into the mind’s eye that aren’t actually on screen.
For most of the film’s first half, Cooper’s Stan remains a silent observer of the carnival’s various talents. First, he befriends a married act — psychic Zeena (Toni Collette) and her alcoholic husband, whom she calls Sweet Pete (David Strathairn). Collette is mostly underused, though she has great chemistry with Strathairn, their silent connection strengthened by honing their act over the years. Strathairn is always great and finds the soul in his character, a shady man whose fear of God has caught up with him at last.
The way Cooper embodies Stan, however, falls completely flat. Collette’s early attraction to him feels unearned and is dropped rather early. Many leering gazes establish his fascination with the younger Molly (a doleful Rooney Mara), but when it comes to their big love scene, not only do sparks not fly, their faces are almost entirely obscured. The murky cinematography allows for deep shadows, but unlike the low-key lighting that gave noir some of its most iconic images, the drab color palette doesn’t allow much contrast. Throughout the film, it felt as though much of the actor’s emotions were withheld because we just couldn’t see their faces. Without any chemistry, it’s hard to understand why Molly would leave her chosen family just because this man noticed she likes to read and eat chocolates.
These gloomy visuals are additionally marred by the overreliance on CGI. In Molly’s act, an electric current flows through her body, but the imagery, which was so mesmerizing in the earlier 1947 version of the story, here looks like a shabby effect from a knockoff ‘X-Men‘ film. Like the flames in the opening scene, the electricity has no ferocity, no spark.
When Stan first appears at the carnival, many characters refer to him as “kid,” “young buck,” “my boy,” as if he were a hayseed young man out in the world for the first time. While flashbacks spread throughout imply he’d spend most of his life in that desolate little house on the prairie, Cooper being in his mid-40s makes those monikers particularly weird. Just as off in its calibration, Cooper’s performance begins so slightly that he comes off incredibly dull compared to the much higher, stylized frequency at which the rest of the cast is vibrating. This imbalance makes for a hard pivot as he transforms from vagabond carny to master mentalist headlining the Copacabana when the film jumps two years in the second half.
Regardless, it’s in the latter half where it beings to find its noir stride when we meet Blanchett’s icy femme fatale Dr. Lilith Ritter, who adds some verve to the film. When Lilith tries to disprove Stan’s abilities at a performance, he callously emotionally humiliates her in front of the crowd. Despite their rocky start, the two concoct a scheme to defraud a few of Lilith’s powerful and wealthy patients with a phony spook show. Obviously, this won’t end well.
Blanchett is effortlessly slick and glamorous and does her best as Lizabeth Scott, husky voice and honey-colored hair to match. However, her witty banter should be a tennis match with Stan lobbing innuendo right back in her court. But again, Cooper can’t seem to get a handle on the material, constantly feeling out of his element but not in a purposeful way.
As with Mara and Collette’s characters’ attraction to Stan, it’s hard to understand what the pull is here. “Born To Kill” has been cited by del Toro and Morgan as an inspiration for their femme fatale meets homme fatale lousy romance, but there was a palpable heat between Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor that is completely missing here. When the truth behind her motives is revealed, we’ve already spent way too much time with this unbelievable seduction. While Blanchett nails the hardness, lacking a good scene partner, much of her performance plays like an imitation of a femme fatale, without any of the complexity that makes them so delicious to watch.
Bloated at nearly 140 minutes with Cooper clearly miscast in the lead, it struggles to maintain urgency. Dreary and overly saturated with a CGI patina, this new take on “Nightmare Alley” adds more gore and f-bombs to the source material but ultimately remains emotionally inert and unclear exactly what it wants to say about these characters and the world they inhabit. [C-]
“Nightmare Alley” hits theaters on December 17.