In Nightcrawler (directed by Dan Gilroy) unemployed Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) sets out to become a crime reporter. His shocking footage that he manages to obtain catches the eye of news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo), whose dependence on these kind of news he soon starts exploiting. As he becomes better and better at his job he reveals more of his sociopathic nature. While the plot is pretty steady, it soon feels repetitive. This is partly due to the movie even visually focusing on Louis’, his narcissism and urge to control and manipulate the things around him. Hence, the avalanche of a range of different close-ups of Gyllenhaal we know little to nothing about the other characters. This way the story feels one-sided with many characters’ storyline remaining unresolved. Another consequences of this focus is that nothing the character does surprises us half-way into the movie anymore. The movies is very much a character study at the expensive of an engaging plot.

The movie is however an excellent critique on crime reporting, where holding a camera is often interpreted by journalists as rising above any standards or rules of human decency. Louis never talks about the victims, he talks about composition and “business opportunities”. He literally steps over corpses to rearrange them before he starts filming. The movie also points out the selectiveness of crime reporting: Nina states right away that they look for graphic footage that show well-off, white people from safe areas as the victims. Those sell the best, because they are perceived to be the most tragic, as opposed to victims who are people of colour. Only journalist Frank (Kevin Rahm), points out the disregard of ethical standards of journalism and the many factual errors, but is frequently ignored.

Jake Gyllenhall also deserves praise for his performance. His character’s way of making people’s skin crawl can figuratively be felt through the screen. The way he parrots business course principles and motivation tapes to justify his increasingly abhorrent behaviour was truly creepy. His entire body language alone really underlines his inability to emphasize or function normally in a social setting. It is not so much about character development, like I said before, but more about the audience realizing how wicked this man really is. However, due to the audience figuring out right away that there is something off about the man there are no real surprises in the movie.

The score is at times a bit ill fitting. At first, when I heard the emotional and uplifting soundtrack playing when Louis gets his way, I thought it was meant to enforce his twisted perspective. However, the music becomes much creepier in the end, which would only have made sense had the narration switched to a different character. Because of this the soundtrack disturbs the flow of the story and in the beginning destroy the atmosphere in some scenes.

All in all it is an interesting movie for those who like in character studies, movies with a slower pace and don’t expect big plot twists. However those who like a bit more action along with the creepy, like in Donnie Darko, will likely find this movie a bit monotonous.