NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (2016)

2/18/2017 - Nocturnal Animals (2016) - 7/10

I sincerely enjoyed and was extremely into most of it, but the end left me… haunted and grasping. The whole film is dark and gripping, like a dusty hand of an escaped convict grasping your ankles from the inky blackness. Metaphor and allusion drape themselves like an endangered fur shawl across the breadth of the feature. That is generally thought provoking, but sometimes it was a touch too in your face.
That acting was top notch from everyone here, infusing verve and profundity behind the eyes of each tortured character. Ford highlighted and fixated upon the bleak malaise of twilight, within the cinematography & staging of each scene, the turmoil of each player, and the bleak unknown of it all. This was all a savory elixir to me that kept my heart pumping, but it did leave an acrid aftertaste.
I was inherently torn. There is a low-Lynchian befuddlement at play within the motivations of the characters and the editorial construction of the cinematic narrative. Questions of precision in regards to reality and drive were risen, but left pending. The cold and hollow ending felt justified but the ambiguity left me drifting. I didn’t dislike it, just felt not truly necessary, unlike other more entrenched film mysteries.
Sensual, but devastating in its encroaching dread. This is a sleek and taught semi-thriller, filled with delectable vision and a caustically gloomy sheathe. Lacking some final details to blast it into the stratosphere, but I thought it was well made and well enjoyable overall.