Nocturnal Animals
Watched 12 February 2017
I’m a sucker for dark, velvety thrillers, and this one worked pretty well for me. The bleak tone had me completely hooked within five minutes. Though it sometimes feels a bit derivative (some moments were especially on-the-nose Lynchian), I cannot deny that it’s effective. It is a dexterously unsettling film.
Tom Ford is, no doubt, a sharp aesthete. What I wasn’t expecting was a very palpable feeling of futility and hopelessness as the other side of the coin, and impostor syndrome as a plot device. It works well in adding some substance to the style.
Pretty great for a film about spiteful, vengeful assholery. It’s not an easy theme to pull off.