Nightcrawler – reviews of a 'wonderfully creepy' satire

What you need to know

Nightcrawler, an American crime drama playing in UK cinemas, explores the underbelly of news journalism in contemporary Los Angeles. Written and directed by Dan Gilroy (co-writer of The Bourne Legacy), the film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo and British actor Riz Ahmed.

Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, an unemployed, unhinged chancer determined to make something of himself. When he is introduced to the world of nightcrawling – the cut-throat practice of filming violent crime scenes for news networks – he discovers his true calling, and his lack of moral boundaries seem destined to make him a success.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What the critics like

Dan Gilroy's "wonderfully creepy and ambiguous thriller" deliberately blurs the lines between David Cronenberg-like satire, crime thriller and horror, says Geoffrey MacNab in The Independent. Gyllenhaal, in one of his finest performances, is funny, engaging and sinister all at the same time.

Sociopathic, bug-eyed, hyper-kinetic "Gyllenhaal gives a disturbing humdinger of a performance" as Bloom, says Kate Muir in The Times. This noir satire on modern news journalism and the audience’s voyeuristic complicity leaves the viewer feeling slightly soiled, but what holds your attention is the increasingly brilliant Gyllenhaal.

"Sharp, dark, satirical and bone-rattlingly thrilling", with a career-peak turn from Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler is this year’s Drive, says Dan Jolin in Empire. It’s also the darkest horse to enter the 2014 Oscar race.

What they don't like

"The complete moral indifference of tabloid journalism is not news", but Gilroy’s over-the-top script mines the vulture culture for jet-black laughs, says Tim Robey in the Daily Telegraph. The curious thing is how implicated we are in the grisly, self-aggrandising quest of this callous nobody.