Unnerving Thriller

Rating: 8/10 (6 September 2015)

Jake Gyllenhaal nails it. No doubt in my mind. His Louie Bloom is this paradoxically charismatic and repugnant character, giving unnerving, wide-eyed, unblinking glares straight into the lenses of the camera as he looks through his own. Intelligently, the director never shies away from staring straight into the beast the script created. He is cold, calculated, and every moment he is on screen, his facade for the audience begins to chip away. Gyllenhaal does marvelous work, transforming himself into this solitary pack-animal, this night crawler. I'm surprised the Academy took no notice.
The script also deserves commendation. Bearing enough intricacies to make it believable as normal conversation, and yet giving the main character enough ticks to make him seem just the least bit...off. The dialogue flows out of Gyllenhaal perfectly and it is one of the reasons he can succeed so well.
Unfortunately, the film loses steam after the climatic action sequence. Without spoiling it, I felt it left too much unresolved or unexplained. It lost some weight there. However, those narrative moments were edge-of-my-seat and thrilling. The picture it painted of LA, and criticism of media and its consumers, was great food for thought.