Oscar Countdown: “Nightmare Alley” is a shocking, emotional, entertaining thriller

Director Focus: Guillermo Del Toro

Guillermo Del Toro, the 57-year-old Mexican film director, producer, screenwriter, and author, was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. His filmography includes over 50 films and television shows, and he is one of the most influential artists on modern filmmaking.

As a child fell in love with film and horror stories. When he grew up, he studied at the Research Center and Cinematographic Studies at the University of Guadalajara.

He has been nominated for five Academy Awards for his films “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and “The Shape of Water” (2017), the latter of which earned him Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.

Currently, Del Toro lives in Los Angeles. He is married to film historian and screenwriter Kim Morgan, and has two children, Marisa and Mariana Del Toro, from his first marriage.

Over the next month, the Pepper Bough staff is celebrating the 94th Academy Awards by reviewing each of this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees. We will be looking at two movies per week, plus a few other notable nominees, leading up to Oscar night on Sunday, March 27.

Recently nominated for four Academy Awards, Guillermo Del Toro’s thriller ”Nightmare Alley” is the kind of movie that will keep you wondering what’s going to happen next. 

After a theatrical run through December and January, the suspenseful film was just released to HBO Max and Hulu on February 1st.

Most teenagers probably won’t make “Nightmare Alley” their first pick when looking for a movie to stream—the thumbnails on the screeners aren’t exactly the most appealing—but once they start it up, it’s worth the time.

Simply: this film can make you go through a mix of emotions. 

“Nightmare Alley” is set in the late 1930’s in New York. 

Bradley Cooper plays Stanton, a.k.a Stan, who takes a job as a carny at a traveling carnival freakshow. While there, he falls in love with Molly (Rooney Mara), an innocent performer at the carnival whose act involves getting electrocuted.

Stan learns many things working for the carnival, including a mentalist act that he gets from Pete (David Strathairn), a fellow performer, that involves making unsuspecting customers believe he can read their minds and perhaps even talk to their dead loved ones.

Stan and Molly marry and end up leaving the carnival together to make some money with their mentalist show in the big city. When one of these shows doesn’t go as planned, their futures change forever.

At the half point, the movie starts getting really suspenseful. I couldn’t look away.

Del Toro, in an interview with the Wrap, talked about why this movie has such an outstanding ending. “We knew the North Star of the movie was the ending, and everything that came before was prologue.”

The movie, co-written with Del Toro’s wife, Kim Morgan, is a direct adaptation of the 1946 crime novel by William Lindsay Gresham, which ignited controversy upon its release for its content, which was very adult in nature. It was turned into a film in 1947 starring Tyrone Power, which is still well-regarded by critics even though it was not successful at the box office.

Overall “Nightmare Alley” is a real mouth opener, and it won’t be the first—or last time—that Guillermo puts together an exciting movie.