Nocturnal Animals

What becomes clear after an opening credits sequence that has to be seen to be believed, and trust me you won't like it, is that Nocturnal Animals is weird and weird on purpose. The trailer might have sold this film as a conventional thriller but it is anything but. The crux of the narrative seems to be about relationships, the consequence of male weakness, the inability of some women to be happy, and the cost of betrayal. One of the more fascinating aspects of the film is its story within a story, focusing on a family that is terrorized by a group of undesirables. It is when dealing with this fictitious story within a story that the film is at its most effective, thanks mostly to the work of Gyllenhaal, Shannon and Taylor-Johnson. It is gripping, upsetting and in the best tradition of the sort of pulp novels it's attempting to mirror. The problem is the other half of the film, the "real" story, focusing on ice queen Amy Adams, and her complicated relationship with the author of the aforementioned fiction also played by Gyllenhaal. It brings the film to a screeching halt every time, often spoiling the terrific suspense built up by the other half. What's worse is that the "real" story never reaches any kind of satisfying resolution, it just hangs there seemingly unfinished. Some powerful moments and some fine acting aside, mostly a disappointment.