Nightmare Alley
“Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley had every opportunity to portray carnivals as diverse places with people from all walks of life.”
Title: Nightmare Alley (2021)
Director: Guillermo del Toro 👨🏽🇲🇽
Writers: Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro 👨🏽🇲🇽 and Kim Morgan 👩🏼🇺🇸 based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham 👨🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Alex Parker 👩🏼🇺🇸♿🌈
—SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 2/5
Guillermo del Toro and screenwriter Kim Morgan bring to life the 1946 novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, but they’re not the first ones to do so. In 1947, Tyrone Power released his own version but the two films are quite similar, featuring A-list talent in the traditionally B-list genre of noir. The mode sits right in del Toro’s wheelhouse; similar takes include creature features such as The Shape of Water (2017) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).
Nightmare Alley, however, stumbles on a technical level. Del Toro compares its aesthetic to the paintings of Edward Hopper and George Bellows, but seems to take the term “film noir”—or “dark film” in French—almost literally. It’s hard to see anything, fantastic production design lost in too-heavy shadows.
Meanwhile, almost none of the performances stand out, least of all Bradley Cooper in the lead role of Stanton Carlisle, a carnival newbie with a mysterious background. His “aw shucks” charm can take him pretty far, but it doesn’t work as a mask for the character’s raw ambition. He simply can’t balance the two opposing natures.
Adding to the sense of lackluster execution is the way del Toro and Morgan leave plot twists and loose ends throughout Nightmare Alley. Despite its two-and-a-half-hour runtime, the film somehow manages to leave out character details that would explain motivations and emotional reactions. The 1947 adaptation included many of those character beats, which makes their absence here even more confusing.
Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE
The film contains three central female characters, all of whom are white. Blanchett’s Dr. Lilith Ritter stands out as the best performance in the movie; while she doesn’t get the most development, Blanchett does the best she can with limited material. She chews the scenery and makes herself the cold, calculating, barely-human monster her character is supposed to be.
However, Nightmare Alley shafts Zeena (Toni Collette), one of Stanton's fellow carnies whose relationship with her husband Pete (David Strathairn) is central to the story. Collette doesn’t get the screen time her character deserves and Zeena becomes the main victim of the film’s inability, or unwillingness, to unveil necessary plot information. The audience is supposed to buy Zeena’s sadness when her husband dies, but nothing in the film prior to that suggests she really cares about him. Without that emotional thread intact, it doesn’t make sense that Zeena’s grief supposedly makes Stanton regret his part in Pete’s death. These events kick off the second half of the entire story, but without a stronger foundation, the narrative feels precarious.
Molly, played by Rooney Mara, also lacks development. Molly and Stanton have a whirlwind romance at the beginning of the movie, but once again the movie’s penchant for leaving out details—such as the fact that Molly marries Stanton in a shotgun wedding—takes the wind out of her character. She merely exists to augment his story arc.
Race: 1.5/5
There are no major characters of color in the film. The only instances we see include a literal sideshow, The Snake Man (Troy James), who appears in a few shots in the film. Clifton Collins Jr., who has Mexican ancestry, appears in the film as well but his role is small and passes for white, rendering any meaningful representation nonexistent.
Behind the camera, Mexican director-writer del Toro does lend a Latin perspective, but the vast majority of the creative team—from producers to writers to the cinematographer—remain white.
The producers had every opportunity to improve on one of the lacking aspects of the original film by portraying carnivals as racially diverse places with people from all walks of life. They didn’t. Nowhere in the original novel does Gresham explicitly state his characters to be white. And even if he did, actors of color are perfectly capable of playing these characters for an audience that is much more diverse than when the novel came out. There’s really no excuse.
Bonus for Disability: +0.25
Relying on dated source material can bring about problematic story beats, and we see that here as an actor with dwarfism is tapped to play the tropey role of a carnival worker. But within regressive trappings, actor Mark Povinelli plays his character of “the Major” with nuance and depth. More importantly, the script supports his character, and audience members are treated to multiple scenes of his off-stage life which further humanize him. The Major struts around the carnival grounds working as not just a sideshow, but as manager and as a father figure to Molly, seen when he and fellow carnie boss Bruno (Ron Perlman) give Stanton a menacing shovel talk. In effect, by positioning the Major as Stanton’s superior at work and personal life, Nightmare Alley stretches past the usual constraints of what little people are given to do in studio films.
The Major (left) and Bruno (right)
Mediaversity Grade: D 2.25/5
Faithful adaptations can be good, but Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is almost too faithful and lacks invention. The extra liberties taken by the 1947 adaptation result in a quicker, snappier, more entertaining film that gets its ideas across effectively. The 2021 adaptation could have improved on that with more diverse casting and behind-the-scenes talent, but it fails to do so. What’s left is a boring misfire from a director who can and has done better.
Like Nightmare Alley? Try these other macabre stories.
The Shape of Water (2017)
The Green Knight (2021)
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