DEL TORO’S NEW NIGHTMARE MOVIE
By Nick Smith
Nightmare Alley, the new movie by Guillermo del Toro, incorporates many of the director’s obsessions – the World War II era, morally complex characters, freaks and spectacle, with a dash of the macabre supernatural. A big huggable bear of a man, his passion for American pop culture is evident in his attitude and his movies.
Del Toro, born in Guadalajara, has made a career of taking the shlocky films and comic books that caught his attention in his youth and giving them his own modern spin. ‘Growing up in Mexico as a kid,’ he said in 2018, ‘I was a big admirer of foreign films, from films like E.T. or Willy Wyler or Douglas Sirk or Frank Capra.’ His first feature, Cronos (1993), showed the ethical and emotional implications of being a vampire. 1997’s Mimic used 1950s bug B-movies like Them! And The Fly as a crawling-off point to explore what would happen if roaches could take human form in the bowels of Manhattan.
It’s fortunate that del Toro has been given such leeway to explore his imagination on the big screen with hits like Blade II (2002) and Pacific Rim (2013). It helps that he knows how to please a crowd; his films are full of creepy motifs and ideas without any horror movie nastiness to scare people off. While other, lesser filmmakers seek to shock, he unsettles, shaking the mind as much as the heart.
The director also uses familiarity to his advantage. The Shape of Water (2017) tells a Beauty and the Beast love story between a cleaner and a creature from a black lagoon. The misunderstood monster theme and the basic narrative is lamentably over-familiar to any horror or comic book fan and it’s no wonder the film was accused of plagiarism by creators of similar projects. However, gorgeous cinematography, bold characterizations (with a mute female lead played by Sally Hawkins) and sweeping, intertwining music help to make the movie special, if not unique.
Del Toro’s populist tactics and eye for heightened visuals have helped him to be accepted by the Hollywood establishment. In 2018, accepting Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, he talked about being part of a world of filmmakers. ‘The greatest thing our art does and our industry does is to erase the lines in the sand.’ The language of film is universal, appealing around the world willing to dream, imagine, empathize for others and be entertained.
Nightmare Alley is a film noir that contrasts a sideshow carnival with Great Gatsby-style society. There’s grifting and spiritualism, mystery and trickery, all shown with intense attention to period detail. Bradley Cooper’s performance is excellent and different from his previous roles. He’s backed up by a strong cast that includes Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Cate Blanchett (The Lord of the Rings), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man) and Ron Perlman, who has been a mainstay in del Toro’s films from Cronos onward. A remake of a 1940s novel and film, Nightmare Alley’s moral ambiguity and post-depression hustle resonate today.
Next up, Del Toto is directing a stop motion musical Pinocchio movie for Netflix after 14 years of development and production. The director has already explored many of this cautionary tale’s explorations of growing-pain metamorphosis, the value of honesty, picaresque travel and father-son dynamics in his Hellboy movies. Now he gets to go back to the source and the results promise to be magical, spiced with childhood nightmares and fairy tale darkness.