Visually engaging and Stunning

Rating: 9/10 (28 May 2016)

Nightcrawler is loosely based on an anti-hero starring Jake Gyllenhaal. As the film brightens, he genuinely looks like a creature of the night: pale, fleshless, with huge sunken eyes. He speaks calmly, but there's desperation in his gaze, and once he has you in his sights, he won't turn away. The film picks up where we see him driving home one night from his dead-end job, fossicking for scrap metal which he sells to a junkyard. Lou spots a couple of men with video cameras near a highway car crash. These are nightcrawlers, freelance reporters who cruise the streets of Los Angeles listening out for police radio reports of accidents and crimes, which they film in hope that the footage will be picked up by the morning news. Fired up, Lou buys a cheap camcorder and starts doing the same himself, finding a mentor in Nina (Rene Russo), a television producer who sees the grisly footage supplied by her protégé as a short cut to higher ratings.
Many have considered that the character of Lou does not go fully crazy as compared to Christian Bale's character in American Psycho (as in over the top), which seemed to have been false advertised, but the film as a whole keeps you on your seat, and it flows very well. For a first time director, Dan Glroy has impressed many critics with his debut.