NIGHTCRAWLER – Not many movies do the whole 'staring long and hard into the abyss of the human soul' thing all that well, but 'Nightcrawler' does. It's a pretty disturbing film. It's also excellent. Jake Gyllenhaal is Louis Bloom, a small time thief who aspires to the big bucks. He finds a way up the ladder when he encounters an underworld of crime scene lurkers who film local atrocities and sell their footage on to news stations. Lewis is prepared to go further than most in giving the viewing public what they want, up to the point of concealing police evidence, engineering a major crime and, ultimately, murder. 'Nightcrawler' could be read as a warped thriller, but its mind is on tricky questions about the media. What does it say about us when we flock to see our fellow humans in the aftermath of RTAs and drive bys? What does it say about us when we queue to consume the bloodied, ravaged images of ourselves on prime time, and fund a multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to the same? Louis clearly doesn't give a toss about any of this. He's a chilly character to put it mildly, a bit like 'Videodrome's Max Renn but with even less humanity (in fact, weirdly enough I thought Gyllenhaal looked spookily like a young Cronenberg here). With a business plan where his personality should be, Louis is pretty much the living embodiment of deregulated market forces, his goofy but plastic charm never really concealing the reptilian engine underneath the facade. The parallels with early Cronenberg don't end with the lead character – 'Nightcrawler' is ultimately about what happens when humans end up as commodified images, although the idea is served up in the register of neon lit noir rather than apocalyptic sci-fi. The bleakest moment – when the station news editor and Louis view that final awful footage and, lit like graveyard statues, rhapsodise about how great it is... truly the twilight of humanity. Great film, see it.
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