movie review nocturnal animals

Nocturnal Animals

This may or may not be one of the best films of 2016, but it’s absolutely one of the most interesting. Or maybe I should say least boring. If I sound puzzled, it’s because I am. Sort of. A little bit. “Nocturnal Animals” is a work of exceptional, undeniable craft, but it’s also a movie that’s meant to stick to you a little bit. Indeed, so vehement is writer/director Tom Ford in articulating his vision at times that you think he’d be disappointed by a viewer that wasn’t at least a little bit angry with him over the movie.

I know from reading the responses to the movie when it played at the Toronto Film Festival that some critics were very angry about the film’s opening images, which play over its opening credits. I’m not going to be coy here—they are shots of a series of naked women festooned with cheerleader regalia, shaking pom-poms and brandishing lit sparklers and such. The twist is, these naked women are, to a one, morbidly obese, sometimes to the point of looking deformed or mutilated, and the shots are, it should be no surprise to learn, in slow motion.

As I observed when I wrote about the movie in September, from the Venice Film Festival, said images aren’t gratuitous, or—I should have said—without a diegetic rationale. (This review draws on the thoughts and words I had about the film at that September viewing.) The cheerleaders are part of a conceptual art exhibit hosted by Amy Adams’ Susan, a gallery-owning high roller in the Los Angeles art world. Susan is beautiful, haughty, lives an extravagant lifestyle funded largely, we assume, by her husband Hutton, played with born-into-privilege knowingness by Armie Hammer , and thoroughly, thoroughly miserable. After her opening, Susan gives herself a nasty paper cut opening a package: the manuscript of a first novel by Edward Sheffield, Susan’s first husband. She’s disturbed by the package and the accompanying note. So disturbed that she impulsively reveals herself, indirectly, to one of her many personal assistants, asking that assistant about whether one’s life choices could add up eventually to a single awful mistake. The assistant, who hasn’t yet made any crucial life choices, has no idea what Susan is talking about.

Susan soon settles in with Edward’s novel. At this point in the meticulously designed and directed film, a seemingly parallel narrative pops up. Tony Hastings, a refined, cultured family man, played by Jake Gyllenhaal , is taking off on a road trip through West Texas with lovely wife ( Isla Fisher ) and lovely but typically disaffected teen daughter ( Ellie Bamber ). On the road, late at night, Tony and his family have a run-in with exactly the kind of people with whom you don’t want to have a run-in, under any circumstances. From behind, from aside, and from ahead, three amped-up wastrels led by a schizzy dude named Ray ( Aaron Taylor-Johnson , in a role that will earn him the legit cred he’s been going after, on and off, for a while), harass Tony and his car until they both run off the road. Things go from bad to worse in a sequence that’s one of the most discomfortingly suspenseful in a Hollywood film since, maybe, “ Blue Velvet .” We know, or at least can infer, that it isn’t real, that it’s actually two degrees of unreal, since what’s happening is a cinematic version of the novel that Edward has sent. The novel that Edward has dedicated to Susan.

And why has he dedicated it to Susan? Is this a fictionalized version of some horrific event that happened in their own shared past? Not quite, it turns out. Soon the third narrative thread comes into play, the story of Susan and Edward, also played by Gyllenhaal. They’re both young and idealistic lovers. He encourages her to pursue art—not as a business, but as a calling. She wants him to be more responsible, or realistic. She dreads turning into her materialistic upper-crust mother. He’s not so sure she dreads it. Emotional damage ensues, but nothing like the stuff that happens in Edward’s novel. This is a movie that, among other things, trusts the viewer to make sense of it, or maybe demands the viewer make sense of it.

The individual stories are kept in the air beautifully by Ford, the fashion designer who’s learned a lot about the distinction between effective stylization and ostentatious stylization since his debut feature of 2009, “ A Single Man .” Some of its weaker moments come when Ford is at his most vehement: a scene in which Susan goes to a board meeting of an L.A. museum and interacts with a super-affected Jena Malone is claws-out as these things go but doesn’t cut to the quick. (Malone looks funny enough, wearing a wearing a dress that looks like a rejected costume for the chessboard scene in “Alice Through The Looking Glass.”) Michael Shannon , on the other hand, achieves a career high with his dry but enigmatic portrayal of a Texas lawman with nothing left to lose. Abel Korzenioski’s very prominent musical score is almost pure pastiche, but it’s accomplished: its fake Bernard Herrmann is as convincing as its fake Phillip Glass.

All the threads will pull together, we presume, when Edward and Susan (whose current life continues to turn to rot as she makes her way through Edward’s dark novel; Hutton, away on business, is cheating on her so blatantly he’s almost too bored to hide it anymore) meet up in real life. The movie’s final scene is one that intends to have viewers talking animatedly as they leave the theater and for a long time after, and right now my takeaway from the movie is a question: why didn’t it affect me very particularly? But this is also a movie that suggests that not having a strong reaction is a way of having a strong reaction to something related to the movie. So I’ll give it that.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ray Marcus
• Isla Fisher as Laura Hastings
• Ellie Bamber as Helen Hastings
• Amy Adams as Susan Morrow
• Michael Shannon as Bobby Andes
• Karl Glusman as Lou
• Jake Gyllenhaal as Tony Hastings
• Armie Hammer as Hutton Morrow
• Abel Korzeniowski

Writer (based on the novel "Tony and Susan" by)

• Austin Wright

Cinematographer

• Seamus McGarvey

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Review: ‘Nocturnal Animals,’ Brutality Between the Pages and Among the Fabulous

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By Manohla Dargis

• Nov. 17, 2016

Joan Didion wrote that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Sometimes, though, we tell stories to kill, to stick a stiletto in and watch the blood drain. That’s the moral of “Nocturnal Animals,” a harsh cautionary tale about love, vengeance and the divide between life and art, that shadowy space in which real people are turned into fictional characters and old hurts made into narrative grist. Here, an unhappy girlfriend becomes a happy wife, a betrayed man becomes a victim all over again, and assorted murderers take turns bringing the pain.

In its broadest outlines, “Nocturnal Animals” is about art — its creation, reception and power. Art and power are something that Susan (Amy Adams), who runs a Los Angeles art gallery, understands. They’ve given her cultural capital and money (there’s a Jeff Koons statue next to her pool), yet she isn’t an artist. That distinction belongs to her ex-husband, Edward, a writer who soon after the movie opens sends Susan his latest, “Nocturnal Animals,” a novel that he’s dedicated to her. She’s intrigued — the dedication is a seduction — and, after some domestic melodrama with her husband, Hutton (Armie Hammer), she settles in to read Edward’s novel.

Once she starts reading, the movie cuts to the story in the novel. It opens with Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal), packing up the family’s old Mercedes for a trip to Marfa, Tex. Before long, he, his wife, Laura (Isla Fisher), and their teenage daughter, India (Ellie Bamber), are driving in the pitch-black West Texas evening, seemingly alone on a two-lane highway. Their quiet coziness is shattered by a gang of men, who roar out of the dark like a nightmare. Led by a smiling sadist, Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), they beat Tony and snatch Laura and India — violence that shakes the novel and its reader. Susan is so upset that she stops reading, shifting the point of view back to her.

And so it goes: Susan reads, Tony bleeds. And just as his story opens up each time she reads the novel, her story opens when she lays it aside. One of those beautiful sufferers so beloved by movies, Susan lives in a palatial Modernist mausoleum — all concrete, glass and bustling help — set high above Los Angeles and its little people. There’s trouble in paradise: Hutton is unfaithful, distant and on a steep financial downslide. Susan tries to reach out to him, but it’s impossible, so she keeps turning to the novel instead, escaping in its violence, tension and suspense.

Working from his own adaptation of Austin Wright’s novel “Tony and Susan,” the director Tom Ford (“A Single Man”) handles the transitions between Susan’s story and Tony’s smoothly. (His editor is Joan Sobel.) Some of the shifts are fairly blunt, as Mr. Ford abruptly cuts back and forth between the two stories. Over time, though, as Tony’s situation becomes increasingly dire, Susan’s responses grow more emotionally fraught. Like any invested reader (or moviegoer), she begins to care about this fictional character, to worry and weep. Edward may be a fine writer, but a series of flashbacks to Susan’s life with him suggests another reason for her tears: Tony looks like Edward.

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Nocturnal Animals Reviews

With great color, style and technique, Ford haunts the audience with the disappointments of our absurd world.

Full Review | Jun 22, 2023

The film's emotions remain profound, unnerving, and at times downright spellbinding.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 5, 2022

Nocturnal Animals is a dark, dense, and beautifully crafted thriller with a killer ending that will stick with you long after it's over.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2021

Nocturnal Animals matches Tom Ford's A Single Man in terms of its visual vibrancy and solid performances, but it has opted to replace its beating heart with a leaden paperweight.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 17, 2021

A gripping and remarkably accomplished piece of storytelling...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2021

Yes, the performances are almost universally excellent, but the depictions don't seem to serve as much more than provocative material for a dirty, pulp story.

Full Review | Apr 14, 2021

Some have been comparing it to the Holy Trinity of surreal noir, Hitchcock, Lynch and Kubrick, but for me it is more like a bloodspattered glossy magazine come to life.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 3, 2021

Nocturnal Animals' pristine, meticulous design and aesthetic choices, along with its big name cast and Fall release, will earn it the distinction of a "prestige drama" or, at best, "psychological thriller."

Full Review | Jan 4, 2021

The biggest problem isn't in the tone or the style or the delivery; it's in the irresolute payoff and the timidity of intentions.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 5, 2020

Tom Ford has crafted an exceptional film proving himself as a director to be taken seriously. He has a very specific style much like David Fincher or the Coen Brothers.

Full Review | Nov 5, 2020

The kind of film that will be discussed and debated amongst those few with balls enough to venture into the indieplex to check it out.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 18, 2020

...violent, pretentious and misanthropic.

Full Review | Aug 13, 2020

Nocturnal Animals is a dark and unforgiving film, filled with impressive performances and visuals, that will leave you with many questions and interpretations of what you just saw, as long as you realize what you're getting into before watching it.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2020

Details from the first half will come back to haunt you in the third act. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 2, 2020

In every piece of the frame there is visual elegance and narrative consistency that always keeps us thinking about the puzzle. The glamor tragedy comes with unexpected twists. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 27, 2020

I would still watch it, but it did definitely feel unfinished.

Full Review | May 7, 2020

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

Nocturnal Animals is a one-of-a-kind experience. It's sexy, dangerous, horrific, and will linger with you long after it's over.

Full Review | Apr 28, 2020

It's rock solid, even if it's not suited to the broadest taste.

Full Review | Mar 30, 2020

Overall, Nocturnal Animals is gripping, compelling and a creative improvement to [Tom] Ford's debut seven years ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 13, 2019

• Cast & crew
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Nocturnal Animals

A wealthy art gallery owner is haunted by her ex-husband's novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a symbolic revenge tale. A wealthy art gallery owner is haunted by her ex-husband's novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a symbolic revenge tale. A wealthy art gallery owner is haunted by her ex-husband's novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a symbolic revenge tale.

• Austin Wright
• Jake Gyllenhaal
• Michael Shannon
• 883 User reviews
• 456 Critic reviews
• 67 Metascore
• 21 wins & 153 nominations total

Top cast 68

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• Trivia Although he is known as a fashion designer, director Tom Ford chose to leave the costuming in the film strictly to the costume designer. Not a single Tom Ford product appears in the film, as Ford "didn't want a commercial."
• Goofs Tony fires the pistol, a Sig Sauer P226 semi-automatic 9mm, twice and is then knocked out by the dying man he shot. The hammer on a P226 cocks and remains cocked after each round is fired, but when Tony wakes up the next morning the hammer is down. There is no way that could have happened; the hammer should have remain cocked.

Edward Sheffield : [to Susan] When you love someone you have to be careful with it, you might never get it again.

• Connections Featured in Breakfast: Episode dated 16 October 2016 (2016)
• Soundtracks Baudelaire Written and Performed by Serge Gainsbourg Courtesy of Mercury France Under License from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 883

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• December 9, 2016 (United States)
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• $22,500,000 (estimated)
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Nocturnal Animals review: Tom Ford returns with a superb, painstakingly crafted movie sure to pick up awards

Jake gyllenhaal and amy adams both give excellent performances in ford’s follow-up to 2009’s ‘a single man’, article bookmarked.

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Former Gucci supremo turned filmmaker Tom Ford isn’t exactly prolific. His second feature Nocturnal Animals follows on a full seven years after his debut A Single Man , but the long wait has clearly been worthwhile. Adapted from Austin Wright’s novel Tony and Susan , this is a superb movie, one which looks bound to pick up awards and to confirm Ford’s position as every bit as important a figure in cinema as in fashion. He scripted, produced and directed the film, which combines painstaking craftsmanship and formal elegance with a gut-wrenching storyline.

Nocturnal Animals has two overlapping but very different strands. Part of it is set in the world of high society and high art. Part is an In Cold Blood -style revenge thriller that unfolds in the dusty outback of western Texas. In own oblique fashion, this is really an examination of a single relationship and of how and why it unravelled. The grim events in Texas reflect in symbolic and very heightened fashion events in the lives of Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) and her ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Gyllenhaal).

The film begins with a very striking and grotesque pre-credits sequence of naked, obese cheerleaders dancing in front of the camera. This turns out to be part of an installation at an LA gallery opening masterminded by Susan.

In the early scenes, all the characters dress and behave as if they’re figures out of one of those very glossy celebrity photoshoots that Ford is famous for organising. There is a very telling scene set in Susan’s minimalist kitchen. It’s a Saturday morning and yet both Susan herself and her philandering husband (Armie Hammer) are dressed up to the nines. He is in a blazer. She is in designer clothes. The marriage is under pressure. He doesn’t come home at nights. His business is crumbling. She is very successful and lives a pampered life among the types of people who have Jeff Koons sculptures in their gardens. Nonetheless, she’s miserable. She can’t sleep and is very on edge.

At times, it’s as if Ford is satirising the world to which he himself belongs. Neither Susan nor her friends “like what they do” but they are all driven, ambitious narcissists, desperate to appear successful. Early in the film, Susan receives a manuscript in the post. This is the new novel, Nocturnal Creatures , written by her ex-husband and dedicated to her. The novel is a very violent story which plays out as a film within the film. A happily married man called Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal) is driving by night across Texas with his wife (Isla Fisher) and teenage daughter (Elle Bamber.) The family has a very grim encounter with three delinquents whose ringleader (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a redneck psychopath.

As Susan reads the manuscript and we see the increasingly dark and violent events in the fictional family’s life, there are also flashbacks to the courtship between Susan and Edward. She is very guilty about the circumstances in which she broke up with him.

In visual terms, this is a tour de force from Ford and his cinematographer Seamus McGravey. They deal with the LA scenes in a dream-like way that is reminiscent of David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive but the Texan scenes have the grit and violence you’d find in a Peckinpah film. Ford also elicits excellent performances both from his two leads and from the supporting cast. The redoubtable Michael Shannon brings gravitas and macabre humour to his role as Bobby Andes, a hard-bitten Texan detective investigating an appalling crime. There is a very striking cameo from Laura Linney as Susan’s mother, a domineering, racist, Republican-type in pearls and with immaculately coiffed hair. Susan loathes her but recognises with horror that she shares many of her traits.

Nocturnal Animals is extraordinarily deft in the way it combines romanticism and bleakness. It’s a film that easily could have slipped into extreme pretentiousness but it never puts a foot wrong.

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Nocturnal Animals is a stylish tale of psychological revenge through art

Tom Ford’s latest is too complicated to have worked on screen. Somehow, it kind of does.

by Alissa Wilkinson

In 2009, Tom Ford , previously best known for his work in fashion , surprised the moviegoing world with A Single Man , a gorgeous, moving film about grief, depression, aging, and love. Many who had initially wondered if this was just a stunt by a famous designer who’d be better off staying in his lane were impressed with Ford’s depth of vision in adapting Christopher Isherwood’s novel . And for his lead performance, Colin Firth got his first Oscar nomination.

Ford returned this fall with Nocturnal Animals , also based on a novel: Austin Wright’s 1993 thriller Tony and Susan , which does not, upon reading, present itself as a natural candidate for the screen. In the book, Susan receives a manuscript from her ex-husband Edward and reads it. The text of Edward’s novel-within-the-novel is reproduced in full, so we read it along with Susan, and experience her feelings about it. It’s kind of a thriller, but the action is all internal: Susan’s thoughts, emotions, and memories, and the words on the page of the manuscript.

Watching someone read doesn’t seem like it would work as a movie, but Ford’s reimagining of the novel — which transposes a number of elements to fit his signature aesthetic — does succeed, on balance. At times its self-indulgence borders on self-parody, but it captures the mood of the book while also doing something new with the material. Nocturnal Animals is no Single Man , but it’s definitely all Tom Ford.

Nocturnal Animals is a story within a story

Susan Morrow ( Amy Adams ) is a contemporary art dealer with a beautiful, carefully constructed life surrounded by cutting-edge art and furnishings. (The beginning credits of the film, it should be said, run over an installation art piece consisting of obese women slowly and nakedly gyrating.) Everything seems to be going according to plan for her, from her careful manicure to her gorgeous home and beautiful husband.

One day, she receives a package from her ex-husband Edward ( Jake Gyllenhaal ), who as far as she knows never succeeded at his dreams of becoming a writer. She opens to discover the novel manuscript and starts reading.

The movie cuts to the story within the novel: Tony (also Gyllenhaal) is embarking, along with his wife Laura ( Isla Fisher ) and daughter India ( Ellie Bamber ), on a road trip to a long vacation. But while driving a long, lonely road in west Texas, they’re run off the road for apparently no reason by a gang of hooligans, and Tony becomes separated from Laura and India. Trying to figure out what happened, he starts working with the local sheriff (the ever scene-stealing Michael Shannon ).

In the meantime, Susan has to stop reading the book and then return to it, so her own life becomes intercut with Tony’s story, as do her memories of her relationship with Edward.

The screenplay (Ford adapted the novel himself) is tense in spots, brutal in others — Ford has a talent for staring frightening things in the face with such beautiful framing that we can’t look away. At its best, the result is almost too nerve-wracking to watch, even though sometimes it feels like massive overkill.

All the doubling in Nocturnal Animals winds up undermining it

The decision to cast Gyllenhaal as both Edward and Tony has a couple of results. One is that there’s a lot of Gyllenhaal in this movie, which is not a bad thing — the two characters are different enough to be interesting, and Gyllenhaal’s a great performer.

But there’s a great deal of additional doubling going on. Adams and Fisher, some people say, are dead ringers for each other, and in an even more meta bit of doppelgängery, the actress who plays Susan’s daughter, and whom we glimpse briefly, is named India Menuez , thus sharing a name with Tony and Laura’s daughter. The two also mirror poses throughout, as do Susan and Tony in their separate timelines.

This is interesting, but it makes explicit too early what was implicit in the novel: that Tony is a stand-in for Edward, and this novel is not some banal gift, but rather an act of revenge intended to exact psychological punishment on Susan, who doubted Edward and broke his heart.

This is an interesting idea, one that’s present in what a lot of people assume about fiction, which is that one character “stands in” for another, and that novelists are always basically writing autobiography. The truth is always a little more complicated, though. Nocturnal Animals picks up on this, making the links between characters in Susan’s world and in Tony’s a bit more complex than one might expect, even though from the beginning it’s clear that they’re linked in some way.

The result is kind of pulpy. Nocturnal Animals is not a smart movie so much as one that appears to be smart, with a glossy exterior (even in the West Texas scenes) but not many ideas humming underneath. But still, it’s remarkable that Nocturnal Animals works as well on screen as it does. If it feels heavy-handed at times, some of the visual trickery makes it interesting, and the ending, which deviates from the novel, is perfect. Nocturnal Animals is a bit hollow, but it’s also frightening, tense, and beautiful to behold.

Nocturnal Animals opened in limited theaters on November 18 and in wide release on December 9.

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Film Review: ‘Nocturnal Animals’

Tom Ford's first film since 'A Single Man' is another winner, an ambitious high-wire noir thriller with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal in an explosive tale of love, violence, and revenge.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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A nice, polite, middle-class man goes after the homicidal goons who brutalized his wife and daughter — the plot of the 1974 Charles Bronson film “Death Wish,” and a thousand revenge thrillers just like it. Torn between romance and money, a woman betrays the sensitive fellow she loves to go with the wealthy player who can provide the life she desires — a plot that goes back to Edith Wharton and Douglas Sirk, or maybe “Dallas.” “ Nocturnal Animals ,” the first film Tom Ford has written and directed since his stunning debut feature, “A Single Man,” in 2009, draws its lurid, heavy-breathing elements from deep inside the well of pulp and noir and soap opera. (It’s based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel “Tony and Susan.”) Yet Ford, the celebrated fashion designer, doesn’t just recycle pulp — he aestheticizes it by taking it dead seriously. He strives to turn pulp into art.

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“Nocturnal Animals,” which premiered today at the 73rd International Venice Film Festival , is a suspenseful and intoxicating movie — a thriller that isn’t scared to go hog-wild with violence, to dig into primal fear and rage, even as it’s constructed around a melancholy love story that circles back on itself in tricky and surprising ways. With Amy Adams as a posh, married, but deeply lonely Los Angeles art-gallery owner, and Jake Gyllenhaal as the novelist from her past who finds himself trapped in a nightmare, the movie has two splendid actors working at the top of their game, and more than enough refined dramatic excitement to draw awards-season audiences hungry for a movie that’s intelligent and sensual at the same time.

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At a glance, “Nocturnal Animals,” with its hot glare of sex and violence, seems like a totally different animal from “A Single Man,” which was a magic-hour L.A. period piece about a refined gay professor in the pre-liberation era. Yet there’s an organic link between them. The Colin Firth character in “A Single Man” may have been conservative and closeted, but he was rapturously romantic — and Ford, in one of the most daring moves in modern gay cinema, portrayed that very romanticism in ways that linked it to a more repressed era. He tapped into the richness of feelings that could only be expressed underground. “Nocturnal Animals,” too, is a movie by a born romantic — only now, the love he portrays is threatened by a scary and corrupt world.

The credits sequence is an outrageous grabber: a series of heavy-set women, nearly nude, jiggling in slow motion and leering into the camera like middle-aged burlesque strippers, while music that’s voluptuous and forlorn enough to have been composed by Bernard Herrmann (the score is by Abel Korzeniowski) floods the soundtrack. It turns out that we’re watching an art installation at the gallery owned and curated by Susan Morrow (Adams), and what it expresses, in a very extreme way, is everything our junky cosmetic culture doesn’t “allow.” It’s a rebuke to moneyed perfection.

We soon see what Susan is rebelling against. She lives in one of those steely modernist L.A. mansions that seems designed not to be touched by human hands, and her marriage to the distant, model-handsome Hutton (Armie Hammer), who is some sort of financial heavy, has clearly entered its ice-cold death phrase. What’s more, their life of luxury has become a sham; they are actually broke, and trying to keep up appearances as Hutton jets off to New York to prop up another deal.

The whole setup borders on silver-spoon cliché, but then Ford leads us into another world. Susan has been sent the manuscript of a novel, entitled “Nocturnal Animals,” written by her ex-husband, Edward (Gyllenhaal), with whom she hasn’t spoken for 19 years. She puts on her big glasses, opens the book, and starts reading, and that leads into an extended sequence of hypnotizing intensity: Gyllenhaal’s character, along with his wife and teenage daughter, are on a trip, driving through West Texas in the middle of the night (they’ve decided to do the road equivalent of a red-eye), when a car starts to pull up beside them and force them off the road. Inside the car are three nasty, drawling delinquent varmints, the kind we’ve seen in movies countless times before, but Ford has staged this encounter with a frighteningly existential, this is really happening bravado that keeps you riveted.

The leader of the gang is Ray, played in long black sideburns by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who gives this taunting sociopath a strange kind of depth. On some level, the sequence is pure redneck-gothic craziness (think “Death Wish” meets “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”), and on another level it’s an all-too-real domestic dreamscape of sexual terrorism in which Gyllenhaal, apart from his fear and loathing, is forced, at every turn, to confront that he’s too “weak” to solve this situation with the kind of heroic action we’re used to: by meeting violence with violence. The movie says, implicitly, that he’s not Bronson or Liam Neeson — he’s you or me.

Each time the film cuts back to Adams reading the novel, we’re reminded that none of this may even have happened. But it sure feels like it did. The movie then intercuts what transpired 20 years ago between Susan and Edward, who grew up together in Texas and wound up in New York, where they reunited and got married. We see the sincerity of their love, but also how the worm of professional failure eats away at their relationship — exactly as Susan’s tough-broad Texas martini-swilling Republican mother, played (in a brilliant turn) by Laura Linney, predicted. There’s an echo of the same conflict that powers “La La Land,” a conflict that is very much of the moment: Can love survive in an age when people who want to be artists have been left with almost no economic foundation? Edward is trying to write novels, and until he succeeds it looks like he might spend his life working in a bookstore, but that’s not enough for Susan — and we understand why. She’s not portrayed as greedy; she just wants a life. And so she destroys the one she has.

Here, as in “A Single Man,” Ford’s staging is staid and classical, elegant and at times a touch overdeliberate, although he’s ambitious without being pretentious. Ford is a true moviemaker — a social observer who’s a junkie for sensation and narrative. He has structured “Nocturnal Animals” beautifully, so that the past truly feeds into the present, and fiction into reality. Gyllenhaal, still ensnared by what happened in West Texas, gets to know a small-town Texas cop, played by Michael Shannon with a mean glint of suspicion that, at first, makes it seem like he’s not much interested in helping this Yankee. But the two men form a fascinating bond. Gyllenhaal’s performance goes to a place of real terror and despair, and when the movie flashes back, he, along with Adams, seems younger, possessed by a more vital spirit. “Nocturnal Animals” is on some level a cautionary tale about the false gods that can lead one to make the wrong choices.

It must be said that other refined movies have gone to these places before. The granddaddy of them all is “Blue Velvet,” the great postmodern Hitchcockian noir that turned pulp sensation into a surrealist high. Then there was “In the Bedroom,” which may be the most sophisticated revenge thriller ever staged; it was like a Bronson movie made by Merchant-Ivory. “Nocturnal Animals” isn’t as good as those films, yet it seizes and holds you — with its suspense, and its vision. It leaves no doubt as to Tom Ford’s fervor and originality as a director, and it leaves you hoping that he’ll make his next film before another seven years passes by.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (competing), Sept. 2, 2016. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 116 MIN.

• Production: A Focus Features, Universal Pictures release of a Nocturnal Animals production. Producers: Tom Ford, Robert Salerno.
• Crew: Director, writer: Tom Ford. Camera (color, widescreen): Seamus McGarvey. Editor: Joan Sobel.
• With: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Armie Hammer, Ellie Bamber, Laura Linney.

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Review: Tom Ford’s skillful meta-thriller ‘Nocturnal Animals’ revisits a broken marriage

Justin Chang reviews ‘Nocturnal Animals’. Directed by Tom Ford, starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Michael Sheen, and Jena Malone. Video by Jason H. Neubert.

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A corrosively beautiful cocktail of a thriller, Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals” tells three interwoven stories, all of them concerning roughly the same characters, but each one set in a different time and place. One story unfolds under the dim lights and dreary pretensions of the Los Angeles art scene, populated by nipped-and-tucked vampires who are meant to represent the city’s jaded cultural elite. Another begins during a blizzard in Manhattan, where two old friends enjoy a warm, life-changing reunion.

Ironically, the longest, darkest and most gripping of the stories is the one that, within the movie’s fictional reality, is itself presented as a work of fiction: a stark and terrifying West Texas crime thriller, dreamed up by a novelist in the grip of some pretty serious demons. Real or not, it scarcely mitigates the powerful tremors of guilt, self-loathing and recrimination left in the story’s wake — a sly reminder that literature, like cinema, creates its own rules.

As one of the biggest names in American fashion, Ford may trade in visions of arch, artificial glamour. But again and again in “Nocturnal Animals” — skillfully adapted from Austin Wright’s 1993 novel, “Tony and Susan” — the writer-director invests a tricky narrative juggling act with an intensity of human feeling that is the opposite of skin-deep. He tears through the veil of slick, self-admiring style that has both unlocked and at times obscured his very real merits as an artist.

Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Armie Hammer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson star in Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals.”

In “A Single Man” (2009), his intoxicating debut feature about a day in the life of a gay English professor in 1962 Los Angeles, Ford demonstrated an affinity for gorgeous surfaces, even more gorgeous actors and the bold, formalist flourishes of Douglas Sirk and Pedro Almodóvar. But he also showed an instinctive feel for performance, rhythm and visual storytelling, belying the shallowness that some attributed to him simply because he came to filmmaking by way of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

Not that Ford is above skewering the chic, image-obsessed enclaves in which he has been known to move. Yet while there are choice satirical moments here — look out for Michael Sheen, Andrea Riseborough and Jena Malone, giving priceless one-scene performances as various L.A. socialites — the movie’s vision of this glossy, self-regarding world is much more tragic than it is funny.

At the center of it is Susan, an art-gallery owner played by Amy Adams with a mesmerizing blend of hauteur and vulnerability. She lives in a state of almost enviably picturesque unhappiness with her handsome, faithless husband, Hutton (Armie Hammer), whose feelings toward her have turned as cold and bare as the walls of their home, a staggering modernist fortress overlooking the Hollywood Hills.

The roots of Susan’s misery are suggested by the package she receives one day from Edward, the aspiring writer she divorced 19 years earlier. He has sent her a copy of his unpublished novel, “Nocturnal Animals,” which Susan begins reading and finds inescapably engrossing. So, too, does the audience. In Ford’s assured hands, the characters of Edward’s book leap off the page and onto the screen with a vividness that matches and ultimately transcends Susan’s own.

The glittering cityscape of L.A. recedes, and soon we’re deep in Texas noir territory. A fictional version of Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), driving late at night with his wife (Isla Fisher) and daughter (Ellie Bamber), runs afoul of three local toughs — the nastiest of whom is played with revelatory redneck flair by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kick-Ass,” “Nowhere Boy”). A shattering loss ensues, and over the next few months, Edward, aided by a gruff, Stetson-wearing detective (a darkly funny Michael Shannon), finds himself on an unsteady path toward revenge.

“Nocturnal Animals” full Q&A includes a chat between Glenn Whipp and actors Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Michael Shannon.

Back in the “real” world, of course, that revenge has a very different target. Even without all the abrupt cutaways to a horror-struck Susan suddenly slamming the manuscript shut, it would be clear that her ex-husband’s novel isn’t just one hell of a harrowing yarn. It is nothing less than a meta-autopsy on their broken marriage, an excoriating portrait of a man grappling with his failures as a husband and father and ultimately laying the blame squarely at Susan’s feet.

It’s here that the film introduces still another narrative thread, this one revealing how Susan and Edward (also played by Gyllenhaal) fell in love, and how their fundamental differences in ambition and temperament ultimately tore them apart. The film begins cutting between California, Texas and New York with increasingly frenzied vigor, almost subliminally suggesting the bonds of class and culture, geography and worldview, that have doomed these characters to their present state of bitter isolation.

If all this sounds terribly grim and heavy, Ford remains too much of a sensual ironist to overlook the material’s underlying camp potential. (Laura Linney makes a hoot of a cameo as Susan’s socialite mother, impeccably coiffed and wearing a three-strand pearl necklace.) And some of the director’s more overtly stylized touches — the operatic progressions of Abel Korzeniowski’s score (like Philip Glass making love to Bernard Herrmann), or a lurid crime scene that looks like a lovingly arranged museum exhibit — almost seem to be mocking the movie’s more serious ambitions.

There are moments here when Ford’s formal command fails him, particularly when he overplays the parallels between his real and fictional narratives. The color red gets a heavily symbolic workout, and while it would be churlish to complain about too many scenes of Adams and Gyllenhaal taking long, meditative showers, the continual juxtaposition of their faces and bodies, their characters literally soaking in their shared sense of tragedy, feels like the work of an altogether less confident filmmaker.

At a certain point, though, you begin to understand why Ford keeps hammering the connection between Susan and Edward: He’s trying to balance them out. Gyllenhaal’s performance, for all its rich emotional shadings, is a howl of pure, emasculated rage, one that builds and builds in intensity until it all but overwhelms the picture.

Is “Nocturnal Animals” an indictment of Edward’s impotence, or a defense of it? That question matters less than the movie’s treatment of Adams, who, as the movie’s ostensible protagonist, is no less subtly heartrending than she is in “Arrival,” her other big movie of the moment. But Susan is an essentially reactive figure, a woman being made to answer for her past crimes and suffer the consequences in the present and future. You feel only compassion for her by movie’s end — enough to wish that Ford, for all his dazzling and demonstrable skill, had extended her a bit more of his own.

------------

‘Nocturnal Animals’

MPAA rating: R, for violence, menace, graphic nudity and language

Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes

Playing: ArcLight Cinemas, Pasadena; ArcLight Cinemas, Hollywood; the Landmark, Los Angeles

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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Nocturnal Animals Review

04 Nov 2016

Nocturnal Animals

When a fashion designer turns to filmmaking, it seems the least we should expect is for it to look the part. And so it’s proved with Tom Ford. His debut feature, A Single Man , managed to find beauty in the bottom of a sock draw, and this, his second, which he adapted from Austin Wright’s novel Tony & Susan , looks similarly exquisite. The man is an artist, undoubtedly.

Some might find the film heartless or cold, but strong storytelling demands empathy not sympathy.

As it happens, so too is his film’s central character, Susan, though she has shelved her creative impulse to manage an LA gallery. The film opens with her latest exhibit — a celebration of obese, wobbling, naked flesh. It is unsightly content strikingly displayed. We come to realise that art mirrors life for Susan, whose outwardly beautiful existence is actually rather ugly, comprising a joyless marriage to a philandering husband (Armie Hammer), a job she no longer likes — she despairs of the junk culture that pervades her world — and a self-fabricated, soul-crushing guilt.

That guilt pertains to her first husband, Edward (Gyllenhaal), a writer whom she deserted in a cruel manner two decades earlier. He was too weak. She wanted someone stronger. But Edward has now finished his debut novel, which he dedicates to Susan and to whom he sends a proof. As she reads his manuscript — a pulp Texas tale of violence received and reciprocated — she sees the obvious parallels between the ‘fiction’ and her actions, her emotions get a kicking and Edward, as a consequence, gets his much-belated revenge. Talk about a dish served cold.

The novel’s plot also plays out on screen as she reads — Gyllenhaal taking a dual role by also playing Tony, the book’s protagonist (authors write about themselves, we’re told). Ford’s transitions in and out of this fictional narrative — and back and forth between Susan’s current life, and the one she once shared with Edward — are wonderfully adept, all the strands wrapping neatly around the body of his thesis like a well-tailored suit.

The cast is impressive and there are delightfully mischievous single-scene turns from Laura Linney, Michael Sheen and Andrea Riseborough. Some might find the film heartless or cold, but that misses the point. Strong storytelling demands empathy not sympathy and, like Susan, we’ve all made bad choices. So what if her lonely fate doesn’t bring a tear to the eye? Maybe it’s not meant to. Like the art that Susan peddles, this is a piece of junk culture with an unapologetic pulp filling, masterfully formed by Ford and expertly framed by cinematographer Seamus McGarvey. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

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‘Nocturnal Animals’ – Film Review

Fashion designer turned director Tom Ford’s second film is a gripping and remarkably accomplished piece of storytelling

Revered fashion designer Tom Ford made an impressive directing debut with 2009’s A Single Man , an elegant portrait of a lonely gay university professor living in ’60s California. His second film as writer-director, adapted from Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony And Susan, is an equally stylish but far more complex thriller that soon becomes a haunting story-within-a-story.

We meet LA art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) as she receives a pre-release copy of Nocturnal Animals, a novel written by her ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal). With her current husband distracted and awayon business, Susan becomes engrossed in the novel, which Edward has unexpectedly dedicated to her. As she reads, we see her visualisation of its violent, revenge-driven story involving Tony Hastings (Gyllenhaal – because Susan sees her ex-husband in the novel’s hero) and a maverick Texan cop (Michael Shannon) helping him secure justice for his family.

Although the novel’s gritty Texan setting bears no relation to Susan’s luxe LA life, she begins to realise that Edward hasn’t dedicated Nocturnal Animals to her out of simple nostalgic affection. As we see the novel’s brutal story unfold, and Susan’s harrowed reactions to it, Ford also offers us flashback scenes showing key moments in Susan and Edward’s doomed romance. A brilliantly clipped encounter between Susan and her overbearing mother ( Love Actually ’s Laura Linney) later proves to be very revealing indeed. Nocturnal Animals could easily have become a confusing jumble of competing narratives, but Ford’s controlled touch keeps it streamlined: we’re invested throughout in both Tony’s quest for revenge and Susan’s visceral response to it. Gyllenhaal is convincing as both boyishly optimistic Edward and battle-hardened Tony, but the film is anchored by a sensitive and compelling performance from Adams, whose natural warmth makes Susan sympathetic even when we learn she has behaved cruelly. Aside from the odd jarring moment, including a provocative opening sequence that belongs in a different film, Nocturnal Animals is a gripping and remarkably accomplished piece of storytelling. Ford’s day job obviously keeps him busy, but on this evidence he should definitely direct more often.

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Nocturnal Animals : The Art Without the Heart

Tom Ford's second feature displays the same emphatic style as A Single Man , but it never quite penetrates beneath its beautiful surfaces.

When Tom Ford, already an iconic figure in the world of fashion, made his cinematic debut in 2009 with A Single Man , it was easy to be skeptical: The universe is rarely kind to those who excel in one field and then try to conquer another. (Just ask Michael Jordan about his baseball career.) But A Single Man was—of course—a fascinating exercise in style. Moreover, it was elevated into something greater by an extraordinary central performance by Colin Firth, who should have won an Oscar then and there instead of having to wait another year for The King’s Speech .

Nocturnal Animals shares the exceptional style of A Single Man . But it lacks a profoundly humanizing performance on a par with Firth’s. It offers, in a phrase, the art without the heart.

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How appropriate, then, that the film’s protagonist, Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), owns an art gallery, and one for which she has largely lost her enthusiasm. Nor is this ennui limited to her professional life. She lives in an immaculately modern L.A. mansion locked tight behind a polished metal gate. (Entering the premises is a bit like climbing into a piece of high-end kitchen equipment.) Her successful husband (Armie Hammer) is increasingly neither: his failing business serves as an excuse for the “late nights” that keep him from her bed and the “work trip” that interferes with her hoped-for beach getaway. It’s clear that Adams has achieved the life that she always wanted, and that it’s hardly a life at all.

But then Susan receives a package in the mail, a book manuscript from the lover, Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal), to whom she was briefly married in her early twenties. The book is dedicated to her and titled, after the nickname Edward had bestowed upon her due to her insomnia, Nocturnal Animals . Susan begins reading.

The text of the novel provides a film-within-the-film: Tony Hastings (also played by Gyllenhaal) is taking a road trip with his wife and daughter that entails a late-night drive across the barren scrub of West Texas. (In a cunning bit of casting, the wife is played by Isla Fisher, who thus fulfills her manifest destiny of serving as Amy Adams’s understudy.) Their car is forced off the road by a trio of rural thugs, who abduct Tony’s wife and daughter. I will leave their fate to the imagination, though the film itself is not so kind.

Suffice to say that the remainder of the novel concerns Tony’s quest for justice and/or vengeance, a quest in which he is aided by one Detective Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon). Tony’s “fictional” story is interspersed with Susan’s “real” one—though to be fair, hers mostly consists of reading the novel, taking baths, lying awake in bed, and having flashbacks to her long ago love affair with the book’s author, Edward.

The two stories are artfully intertwined—at times a bit too artfully. When Tony bathes, in order to scrape off the dust and sweat of West Texas, Susan bathes, because—well, that what you apparently do if you’re a wealthy Los Angelean who’s lost interest in her career and her marriage.

Gradually, deeper parallels emerge. Susan wounded her ex-love Edward grievously when she left him over his writerly dreaminess and lack of ambition. (Laura Linney has a marvelous cameo in flashback as Susan’s socialite mother, warning that she would eventually do exactly this: “Just wait,” she purrs. “We all eventually turn into our mothers.”) Meanwhile Tony, Edward’s literary stand-in, suffers wounds decidedly more vivid in nature. But despite the distance between them, both of the film’s locales—gleaming, spotless Los Angeles; arid, sun-scorched Texas—remain relatively sterile and lifeless.

Gyllenhaal continues his recent run of strong performances as Edward/Tony, although his character is by nature secondary. And while Shannon is exemplary as the ever-so-shady lawman, he doesn’t show us anything we haven’t seen from him before. At the center of it all, Adams remains something of a cypher. Hers was the performance that needed to break free of Ford’s immaculate frame, as Firth’s did in A Single Man , and it doesn’t quite succeed. Although she is playing a form of acute and lingering sadness, it never registers as deeply as it did in her marvelous turn in last week’s Arrival .

Nocturnal Animals is an intriguing, well-wrought film that explores penetrating questions: choice versus indecision, commitment—to art, to love, to revenge—versus cowardice. But for all its strengths it never quite breaks below the surface.

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Movie Review: Nocturnal Animals (2016)

• Vincent Gaine
• Movie Reviews
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• --> December 3, 2016

Love. Loss. Regret. Betrayal. Pain. Memory. Revenge. Beauty. These are the oh-so-jolly palate of Nocturnal Animals , Tom Ford’s haunting, ethereal and quite extraordinary second feature. Ford crafts a remarkable, trifurcated narrative with exquisite precision, slipping between the life, memories and imagination of Susan Morrow (Amy Adams, “ Arrival ”) in a way that demands attention, stirs the emotions and may well leave the viewer enthralled and frustrated in equal parts.

From Shane Valentino’s intricate production design to Joan Sobel’s sometimes rhythmic and sometimes abrupt editing to Seamus McGarvey’s evocative cinematography and Abel Korzeniowski’s haunting score, the sheer level of craft utilized in Nocturnal Animals could smack of artifice. Such artifice could be potentially alienating, but in this case is central to the film’s meaning, as Susan lives in a world of constructs and arrangements, effectively trapped within these structures even as the film slips between them. The house she shares with husband Hutton (Armie Hammer, “ The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ”) is an elegant scaffold of steel, stone and glass, never seen in its entirety and hardly a place of warmth or affection. Deep focus shots from the entrance hall capture what may be the living room, while the sleek kitchen of marble and chrome provides a site for detente between the distanced spouses.

Despite the Los Angeles setting, coldness is the dominant feel of Susan’s home life, while her work as art gallery owner is no more emotional. The title sequence depicts one of the works in this gallery, and the frankly baffling elements of this artwork set the mood for the film as a whole. We first encounter Susan at the opening of this exhibition, a perfectly sculpted figure isolated in a room filled with people discussing the art work around them. She seems to belong here, almost like a living exhibit that cannot engage with those around her, something to be looked at but not truly seen. This conceit continues throughout the film, as Susan in often framed behind glass or water: Rising out of a bath, standing in a huge shower, gazing out of a window as rain pelts against the pane. The extensive production design is both style and substance, as the formal arrangement of the film expresses the elaborately constructed life of the central character, and also the isolation and hollowness of this life.

The most prominent piece of design is Susan’s glasses, an ornate pair of tortoiseshell spectacles that create a barrier between her and the world even as they provide a route to another world, that of the eponymous novel within the film. Written by Susan’s ex-husband, Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal, “ Nightcrawler ”), the novel is a neo-noir tale set in Texas, where Tony Hastings (also Gyllenhaal) and his family are victims of a terrible crime, after which Tony works with Detective Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon, “ Elvis & Nixon ”) to pursue the perpetrators. While Susan’s environment is cold and distant, the tale within the tale provides burning heat both literal and emotional in the imaginary sequences in Texas. A late night chase along a highway is grippingly tense, as is the horrifying encounter that follows. McGarvey lenses the Texas landscape in harsh ochre hues, in sharp contrast to the cool colors of Susan’s world. Within this burnt landscape, Tony’s reactions are agonizingly exposed, while Bobby is a chilling presence of narrowed eyes, clenched cigarette and laconic menace. Almost unrecognizable is Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“ Godzilla ”) as Ray Marcus, leader of the youths Tony and his family encounter, and Taylor-Johnson is deeply disturbing as this apparent psychopath. The clash between these three points of the crime triangle — perpetrator, victim and cop — is a compelling and often distressing narrative, as the sequences of the novel’s action feature tragedy, heartbreak and horror, while Susan’s disturbed reactions likely mirror those of the viewer.

The third strand of the narrative — flashbacks to Susan and Edward’s past relationship — is a blend of the present day events and the narrative of the book. As noted above, Gyllenhaal plays both the writer and the writer’s protagonist, but Adams only plays Susan whereas Tony’s wife Laura is played by Isla Fisher (“ The Brothers Grimsby ”), the resemblance between the two actresses underlining the parallels between Edward’s novel and his past marriage. Not that the viewer is likely to miss these parallels, as the flashbacks to the marriage follow a similar pattern of decision, difficulty and disaster. The precise design continues, intercutting between Susan reading, scenes in the novel and her earlier conversations with Edward, in a way that mimics the flashes of memory and sudden violence in Edward’s book. A devastating visual composition from Edward’s novel is echoed in a more mundane context in Susan’s world, demonstrating the bleeding of the novel into the surrounding narrative.

Nocturnal Animals is not, however, a pretentious lament of First World problems. Susan is far from a pitiable victim, presented with her own agency, sympathetic and engaging while also being deeply flawed and aware of her own shortcomings. Ford’s film is not so much a tragedy as a highly (but never over) stylized depiction of memory and imagination, at times echoing the best work of David Lynch or Christopher Nolan. For all its mathematical precision, it is a film of mood, emotion and experience, making the internal world visual and communicable, and making sure that we feel everything along with Susan. It is a frequently uncomfortable watch and one that some may find more admirable than enjoyable — indeed I found the conclusion deeply frustrating — but if you let it in, go with it and allow its power to suffuse you, you may find yourself enjoying one of the year’s best films.

Tagged: investigation , marriage , novel adaptation , revenge , writer

Dr. Vincent M. Gaine is a film and television researcher. His first book, Existentialism and Social Engagement in the Films of Michael Mann was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2011. His work on film and media has been published in Cinema Journal and The Journal of Technology , Theology and Religion , as well as edited collections including The 21st Century Superhero and The Directory of World Cinema .

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'Movie Review: Nocturnal Animals (2016)' have 8 comments

December 3, 2016 @ 2:10 pm Reece

This one gave me a bad vibe while I watched it and I loved the general unease of it. The atmosphere is the kind you get while walking in a dark alleyway. There’s not a single character to like it in either. The whole production is dank and its great because of it.

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December 3, 2016 @ 2:23 pm Lonley brit

I was hoping the story in the story would combine somehow eventually, but I still liked it a whole lot even though it didn’t happen.

December 3, 2016 @ 2:39 pm matchbox26

Michael Shannon is goddamn beast. He’s so good.

December 3, 2016 @ 3:31 pm steb

Deep cutting movie. Loved that Amy Adams got exactly what she deserved in the end–a loveless marriage, an empty soul and no closure.

December 3, 2016 @ 3:54 pm Donovan

I want to see this!

December 3, 2016 @ 4:40 pm Mike Watkins

Amy Adams is a fine wine, getting better and better with age. She can deservedly win an Oscar for her work in this or Arrival. Michael Shannon deserves a supporting nod as well.

December 3, 2016 @ 5:09 pm Lucifern

Very polished movie but go beyond the Tom Ford shiny surface, its flat and doesn’t have much to say. Well, that’s not true, actually it does have something to say, the dialogue is vapid and explanatory and every character’s notion is perfectly spelled out for us. There is no nuance.

December 3, 2016 @ 10:22 pm dielection

great review, I can’t wait for it to open next week.

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‘Nocturnal Animals’ Review: Twisty Thriller Plays With Truth, Fiction, Murder

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Tom Ford is drunk on movies. Like the fashion icon he is, the director brings a keen eye for style, texture and design to the images he creates. But bruised humanity and the emotions roiling underneath elegant surfaces – those are his true subjects as a filmmaker. A Single Man (2009) was a masterful debut with Colin Firth giving a career-best performance as a gay professor feeling suicidal over the death of his lover. Ford hits it out of the park again in Nocturnal Animals, a stunning film noir that resonates with ghostly, poetic terror.

Amy Adams stars as Susan Morrow, a sleek, lacquered Los Angeles gallery owner without a hair out of place. The mess, however, is all inside. The film opens with one of her art installations featuring morbidly obese female nudes dancing (hello, David Lynch). Susan’s success is superficial: She hates her job, hates that she’s a manager and not an artist, and hates that her husband Hutton (Armie Hammer) is cheating on her.

Into Susan’s life comes an advance copy of a book. It’s from Edward ( Jake Gyllenhaal ), the starter husband she dumped and forgot nearly two decades ago, with encouragement from her rich, hard-drinking harridan of a mother (Laura Linney, so good you want to kill her). The novel is dedicated to Susan. Sweet – only it isn’t. The tome tells the story of Tony (Gyllenhaal again), his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and their teen daughter India (Ellie Bamber) on a nightmare road trip. Forced off a West Texas freeway by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and two other hoods, Tony must stand by helplessly while the boys have their way – and worse – with his wife and daughter.

WTF! The sequence is as terrifying as any chainsaw massacre or a Jim Thompson crime novel, showing Ford’s unexpected flair for shuddering unease and grisly, galvanizing action. Tony teams up with a Texas cop Bobby Andes, played with animal vibrancy by Michael Shannon , to bring these thugs to justice. But is he man enough? That’s the vengeful heart of the matter as Susan rightly interprets the book as retribution for the sins she committed against Edward.

What’s happening here is that Ford has taken on the impossible task of filming an unfilmable novel, Austin Wright’s 1993 Tony and Susan. There is some strain when the real world and Edward’s revenge fiction bump heads. But the impossible has brought out the visionary best in the director, who holds course as the ground keeps shifting. As a screenwriter, he added the satirical jibes at the L.A art world that aren’t in Wright’s novel. Otherwise, he sticks to the criss-crossing themes running through this parallel universe. Cheers to cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, composer Abel Korzeniowski and especially editor Joan Sobel who help Ford weave multiple stories into one darkly funny, visually dazzling piece.

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The actors could not be better. Gyllenhaal, in two roles, dives deep into the wells of perceived masculine weakness. And Adams takes Susan from dewy college girl to hardened ice queen without missing a stop or a nuance in between. She’s spectacular. Nocturnal Animals can throw you with its shifts in tone, its merging of past and present, but don’t overthink what Ford has so cunningly crafted. Surrender to it.

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Nocturnal Animals Ending, Explained

‘Nocturnal Animals’ is an engrossing psychological thriller by director Tom Ford that showcases powerful acting performances by Michael Shannon and Jake Gyllenhaal . Aaron-Taylor Johnson’s Ray Marcus and as well as Amy Adams’ Susan are memorable performances as well. This film, that has another film embedded inside it, is one of those movies that brusquely ends and leaves you slightly unsatisfied but gets immensely better on a second viewing. Personally, it is definitely one of the best movies that I watched in 2016 . It’s a shame that the screenplay of the movie didn’t get enough recognition. That’s probably because of the subtleties and the need for interpretations that the film requires. The confusing ‘Nocturnal Animals’ ending also didn’t help the matter. In any case, it’s a stirring cinematic experience. Owing to the seemingly open-ended and abrupt ending, this movie invites a lot of explanations. Here’s my explanation: (SPOILERS AHEAD)

The plot, in short

There are two different plots in the movie. The seemingly unrelated plots have lots of correlations between them. In the main story-line, we follow Susan ( Amy Adams ), an art gallery owner, who receives a package from her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). The package is a manuscript of his novel. The story of the novel, which is the second plot, is unraveled when Susan reads it.

The story of Edward’s novel

The novel begins with a family road trip. Tony Hastings (Jake Gyllenhaal), his wife Laura and daughter India are driving to Marfa, Texas. During the night drive through somewhere isolated in West Texas, the family is troubled by a gang of three men in a car: Ray Marcus, Lou, and Steve Adams. During the commotion, Ray (Aaron-Taylor Johnson) and Steve drive off with Laura and India while Lou forces Tony to drive the other car into the desert and leaves him there. After hitchhiking all night, Edward reaches the police in the morning. Detective Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon) is assigned the case, and they find Laura and India abandoned near a shack after being raped and cruelly murdered. After a year, Bobby manages to arrest Lou. Steve got killed in an unrelated incident, leaving Ray as the only culprit left to punish.

Due to the circumstantial nature of the evidence, they are unable to charge Ray. As someone who is dying of terminal lung cancer, Bobby decides to go off the books and helps Tony to exact revenge by dealing with Ray by themselves. They abduct Ray and Lou and decide to extort a confession out of Ray, during which they both try to get away. Bobby shoots and kills Lou while Ray successfully escapes. Bobby and Tony  goes looking for Ray independently. Tony finds Ray in the shack where Laura and India were found. During the violent encounter, Ray hits Tony in the head with an iron bar while Tony fatally shoots Ray. Blinded and walking aimlessly in the desert, Tony falls, accidentally shoots himself and dies.

The main plot

The movie begins with Susan receiving a package from her ex-husband, Edward. It’s the manuscript of his book, ‘Nocturnal Animals,’ which is apparently dedicated to her. Suffering from insomnia, Susan delves into the book at night, and we follow the story in the novel along with her. Meanwhile, it is established that the relationship between Susan and her husband Hutton ( Armie Hammer ) is strained and that he is being unfaithful to her. Moreover, Susan is unhappy about her career as well. “I don’t really care about all this art” she says at one point.

Through flashbacks, we see her relationship with Edward and how that turns out. Having spent their high school years as friends, they connect instantly when they meet again in graduate school after years. They both admire each others’ aspirations. Edward wants to be a writer and Susan, although unsure, wants to be an artist. Despite her mother’s disapproval of Edward (She thinks Edward is too weak and not right for Susan), they get married. Unfortunately, Susan starts feeling restless about Edward’s flimsy writing career and ends up being dismissive of his aspirations. She tries to break the marriage off by telling him that she wants different things while Edward firmly believes that that’s not true and tries to repair the marriage. But, Susan cheats on him with Hutton and even secretly gets an abortion when she becomes pregnant with Edward’s child. This inevitably leads to divorce.

Coming back to present day, Susan is deeply moved by the book and she emails Edward to set up a meeting. They decide to meet up in a restaurant. Having lost hope in her marriage and her career, a possible rekindling of her relationship with Edward seems to excite her. She goes to the restaurant and gets stood up by him. The end! (Yeah, I know!)

Initially, I was a little dissatisfied and unimpressed by the seemingly abrupt climax. But, in retrospect, I believe it was an apt ending. Let’s see why!

Tony: Edward (Edward’s good nature, to be more precise)

This is pretty obvious from how Gyllenhaal played both of them. From the flashbacks, we see how Susan complains about how Edward always writes about himself. So, it’s natural for her to picture Tony as Edward and by extension the audience to realize that Tony Hastings represents Edward. (Fun fact: Hastings is where Edward and Susan are from in real life). More importantly, both Tony and Edward are both good men who lost what they cherished the most in their life: Tony’s family and Edward’s relationship with Susan respectively. Tony dies at the end of the novel. That could be interpreted as an indication of Edward planning to commit suicide. But, being the optimistic person that I am, I don’t think Edward dies. Instead, I think the goodness of his heart dies during the course of his revenge.

Tony’s family: Edward’s relationship with Susan

By depicting the dreadful rape and murder of Tony’s wife and daughter in the books, Edward is conveying Susan how extremely devastating and brutal her act of leaving him was. Especially how she aborted their unborn child without even consulting him. Another striking indication of this correspondence is how Tony’s wife Laura, their daughter India, Susan and her real life daughter (Edward is not the father. But, still) all four of them have auburn hair. Laura and India look like a happy family that Edward envisioned to have with Susan.

In a conversation with one of her colleagues, Susan brings up the fact that Edward used to call her a nocturnal animal. So, she takes the title of his novel as a tribute to her. In the novel, the gang who raped and murdered Tony’s family are the nocturnal animals. Just as Susan ruthlessly destroyed their relationship and killed their unborn child. Another considerable indication of this analogy is the moment when Ray Marcus accuses Tony of being too weak. That’s the exact same phrase Susan’s mother used to describe Edward. According to her, Edward is romantic and fragile. During the final days of their marriage, Edward suspects that Susan feels the same way about him.

Additionally, while talking to Edward about how unhappy she is, Susan says “ You’re so wonderful and you’re so sensitive and romantic and..” Edward instantly gets angry and finishes the sentence by saying “ … and WEAK”. Similarly, in the novel, Ray asks “Why does a nice guy like you hang out with Andes who kill people?” that triggers Tony. Both Tony and Edward hated being labeled “nice”/weak. And, both Susan and Ray constantly accuse Edward/Tony of being “nice” and weak. In a way, Edward indeed feels that he is weak and that insecurity is one of the biggest driving forces that makes him so vengeful. The urge to prove her wrong by showing that he is neither“ a good man” nor weak.

When his life was ruined by the gang, the one person that kept Tony going and supported is Bobby Andes. When the culprits get away from the clutches of the law, he goes beyond the rule-books and helps Tony to exact vengeance. Of course, he is dying just as he believes in the justice system. Similarly, in real life, Susan ruins Edward’s life by killing their marriage, discouraging his writing, and then getting away with it. The sense of justice/revenge kept him going till the end.

The Revenge

Why is Edward standing Susan up at the restaurant such a big deal? Imagine stuck in a loveless marriage. Imagine doing something that you don’t enjoy at all. Imagine seeing your spouse cheat on you right in front of your eyes and not being able to confront that. Imagine regretting every decision of your life and leading a pointless life of an insomniac. That’s what Susan’s life is! She says “I have everything. Yet I am so unhappy.”

In midst of that vapid, worthless, dark life of hers, a potential revival of connection with her ex-husband, who, by the way, was totally right about what she wanted in life, is a hopeful, shining ray of sunshine. She finally had something that gave her a reason to wake up in the morning (In case she got any sleep at all). She gets really hopeful and excited about meeting him. Her enthusiasm to meet him is made obvious in the scene where she is standing in-front of a mirror wearing a low-cut dress. So, Edward basically made her feel dangerously, enormously hopeful about her pathetic little excuse of a life and then brutally killed that hope. Sweet, huh?

Read More: Arrival Ending, Explained

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Nocturnal Animals (United States, 2016)

Nocturnal Animals employs one of the most inventive uses of neo noir tropes and techniques I have seen in recent years. Intense, insightful, and strangely powerful, Tom Ford’s adaptation of Austin Wright’s novel, Tony and Susan , assumes an intelligent audience.  The movie isn’t afraid to ping-pong back and forth between past and present, between fiction and reality. It doesn’t worry that the viewer might get lost (believing that, if such a thing happens, they’ll catch up along the way).

After an unforgettable opening in which art gallery curator Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) offers a glimpse into what can only be described as “performance art”, we’re plunged into the midst of an upper class marriage on the rocks. However, just as Susan’s relationship with her current spouse, Hutton (Armie Hammer), is crumbling, she is pulled back into the orbit of her first husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). Finally, after many false starts, he has found the inspiration to finish a novel. He wants Susan, to whom it is dedicated, to have a chance to read “Nocturnal Animals” before its publication.

The book-within-the movie introduces us to Tony Hastings (Gyllenhaal), who is on a road trip through the wide open spaces of Texas with his wife, Laura (Isla Fisher), and his teenage daughter, India (Ellie Bamber). After becoming involved in a road rage-inspired game of cat-and-mouse, Tony’s car is forced off to the side with a flat tire. The family’s tormentors - three twentysomethings whose consciences are nowhere to be found - start out with teasing and taunting before moving to darker actions.

Nocturnal Animals ’ first book-within-movie segment is harrowing - as taught and unnerving as any extended sequence in any recent horror movie or thriller. The three antagonists, as portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Karl Glusman, and Robert Aramayo, exude menace and the slow, torturous manner in which they prey on their victims enhances the level of tension. Although this is an enactment of events found in Edward’s novel, we’re initially unsure whether this is purely “fiction” or whether it’s a partially autobiographical reflection. After all, Edward and Tony are both played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Isla Fisher is made to look like an Amy Adams clone. That uncertainty, coupled with cuts to Susan’s reactions as she reaches key moments in the book, creates an ambiguity about whether this might have happened.

A series of flashbacks highlight the highs and lows of Susan and Edward’s relationship as it traverses the road from friendship to marriage to divorce. These jumbled memories are interleaved with Susan’s reading of Nocturnal Animals , which turns into a meditation on what steps a victim can take when traditional justice fails. The film’s ending is a gut-punch and, as powerful and appropriate as it is, it will shock some viewers with its suddenness and bleakness.

As was true of Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man , the fashion designer’s eye is evident in how every shot is framed. There are some gorgeous images, such as the one where a young Susan and Edward meet on a snowy New York street. There are audacious moments, such as the opening credits sequence where fully nude, corpulent women are shown dancing and posing. Although there are times when a visual director can become obsessed with the look of his film (to the detriment of the narrative), that’s not the case here. Ford’s aesthetic enhances the movie’s story and momentum.

Although the second half of Nocturnal Animals doesn’t rise to the level of the white-knuckle first 45 minutes, the production as a whole represents an effective melding of visceral and intellectual filmmaking. This movie leaves an impression that’s difficult to shake.

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Nocturnal animals.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 10 Reviews
• Kids Say 6 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Stylish, stylized, remote drama is violent, intense.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Nocturnal Animals is a fascinating but ultimately remote drama about deceit, misogyny, marital conflict, murder, and heartbreak -- a moody, morbid stew that's too mature for all but the oldest teens. Gruesome scenes show murdered bodies, and there are many other moments of…

Why Age 17+?

Lots, and sometimes it's very intense. Groping and sexual assault, harassmen

Nudity in opening sequence. A couple is shown after sex, with a woman's nake

Everything from "bitch" and "s--t" to "f--k."

Wealth is signaled through products, including iPhone, Apple, and Mercedes Benz.

Plenty of social drinking, sometimes to excess. References to needing pills to c

Any Positive Content?

Memory is long, and forgiveness sometimes takes a circuitous route.

Edward is kind and passionate about his art, while Susan has good intentions.

Violence & Scariness

Lots, and sometimes it's very intense. Groping and sexual assault, harassment on the road (including a car trying to force another off the road), abduction, rape (viewers don't see it, but it's clear what's about to happen), and murder. Naked, dead bodies are shown; the blows to their heads are pretty visible. A scene shows a man in a brutal fight that end in gunshots and death.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Nudity in opening sequence. A couple is shown after sex, with a woman's naked back visible. Flirting and kissing. A man is shown on the toilet, practically naked, wiping his backside.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Plenty of social drinking, sometimes to excess. References to needing pills to calm yourself down. A man with lung cancer smokes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

Parents need to know that Nocturnal Animals is a fascinating but ultimately remote drama about deceit, misogyny, marital conflict, murder, and heartbreak -- a moody, morbid stew that's too mature for all but the oldest teens. Gruesome scenes show murdered bodies, and there are many other moments of violence, plus close-up shots that show the aftermath of struggles and fights. There's also smoking, drinking (mostly social, some depressingly isolated), and pill-popping, as well as nudity (some sexual, some not; some scatological) and plenty of swearing (including "s--t" and "f--k). Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaall co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (6)

Based on 10 parent reviews

much more sexual violence than indicated by the reviewer

What's the story.

In NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, Susan ( Amy Adams ) is a fairly successful museum curator married to a banker ( Armie Hammer ) who may or may not be on the cusp of losing his fortune but is most definitely having an affair. Then a package arrives at their house, accompanied by a note from Susan's long-estranged ex-husband, Edward ( Jake Gyllenhaall ). He's a novelist, and he's just sent her his about-to-be-published book, which is dedicated to her. Susan reads it, and she's soon pulled into the world Edward has created -- a place where a husband, Tony (Gyllenhaall) and a cop with a cancerous death sentence ( Michael Shannon ) try to avenge the ghastliest crime committed against him and his wife and daughter.

Is It Any Good?

Though it's visually stunning, there's something clinical about the way this drama dissects the relationships it depicts, no matter the heat, anxiety, fear, and passion at their heart. Even its gut-wrenching performances, specifically Gyllenhaal's, can't wrench Nocturnal Animals back to its beating-heart center, rendering it more aloof than it needs to be -- or should be.

That's a pity, because the film is revelatory in some ways, a study in how heartbreak can be as savage as physical assault. The story-within-a-story structure works, for the most part, though it also halts the momentum at times. Still, Nocturnal Animals -- which was inspired by Austin Wright's book Tony and Susan -- is worth watching. And not just for Adams, who's impressive here (as is Laura Linney in a small-but-pivotal role as Susan's mother), but also to witness writer-director Tom Ford 's confidence. If only the film more closely embraced the emotions at its core.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Nocturnal Animals ' violence . There's a lot of it, but it's shown in a very stylized way. How does that affect the impact of the crimes?

How does the movie's look and feel relate to its subject matter?

Why does Susan seem so adrift? What about her world makes her feel lost?

Who do you think the movie is intended to appeal to? How can you tell?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 18, 2016
• On DVD or streaming : February 21, 2017
• Cast : Jake Gyllenhaal , Amy Adams , Michael Shannon
• Director : Tom Ford
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Focus Features
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 116 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : violence, menace, graphic nudity, and language
• Award : Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : June 20, 2024

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What to watch next.

American Hustle

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Nightcrawler

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Nocturnal animals.

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BABY REINDEER

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Nightbitch Is More of an Idea Than a Movie

Marielle Heller’s evocatively titled new film Nightbitch unfolds at times like an essay film. Based on Rachel Yoder’s acclaimed novel, Amy Adams stars as a mother who, struggling with overwhelming parental duties and frustrations about the world she left behind, starts turning into a dog. (I haven’t read the book, which has been called a satire, a fairy tale, a magical realist fable, a horror story, and more.) Adams narrates her transformation with alternating omniscience and doubt. Sometimes she stands above the fray, expounding on the cosmic ironies of being a woman with dreams who shunted them all aside to have a baby. And then sometimes she wonders aloud if maybe she’s a terrible mother for worrying about any of this.

That queasy positional balancing act occurs throughout Nightbitch , and Adams, whose button-cute sweetness always seems to hide a deep intelligence, is ideally suited for both sides of the see-saw. “You light a fire early in your girlhood,” Mother, who was once an up-and-coming artist, intones in lines taken straight from the novel. “You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs…You keep it secret. You let it burn.” And then, she adds, you give it all up for “a person who will one day pee in your face without blinking.”

This isn’t a tract against motherhood, however. Heller’s montages of Mother’s repetitive days walk a fine line between the pulverizing reality of endless sizzling hashbrowns and messy playtimes and the profound love between parent and child. Her toddler (played by twins Arleigh Patrick Snowden and Emmett James Snowden) is adorable, and the film embraces that: We understand why Mother gave up everything to care for this tiny, vulnerable human, even as we also understand that she’s dying inside. Again, Adams brings that right mix of tenderness and annoyance, between holy wonderment and existential boredom.

As for the whole dog thing: It’s more a metaphorical grace note than a true narrative throughline, though Heller does give us intermittent bits of body horror and lots of shots of her protagonist’s dog-self running through the streets of both suburbia and New York City. Maybe metaphorical is the wrong word. Rather, the dog is the expression of how motherhood is, fundamentally, an intensely natural process growing out of the violent, animalistic fact of childbirth. We cover it up in our culture with luminous images of softness and kindness, but at heart it’s a fearsome, beastly thing. (Hell, those early months and years of parenting even turn many of us dads into animals, and we generally don’t have to do the whole giving birth part.)

This overarching meditative quality of Nightbitch is at once its most intriguing element and its greatest shortcoming. Mother’s gradual transformation should give the movie a sense of movement, but because it’s held at a remove, tedium sets in. Basically, there’s no real story here. Which wouldn’t be a problem if the film didn’t keep trying to give us one. Beyond Mother’s possibly-symbolic nocturnal roamings, it also outfits her with a coterie of other youngish moms whom she perceives as somehow beneath her, but who, of course, will turn out to be not that unlike her. It’s an interesting idea, but we don’t see much of these people. They never become characters; they graduate from punchlines to sisters in an instant, more to work a theme than to really engage us. Mother’s husband, Father (Scoot McNairy), is a milquetoast who travels all the time and disingenuously loves to say that he would happily give everything up to spend more time at home with his wife and kid — and it’s only a matter of time before he realizes how hard parenting is and changes his ways. Again, he seems more like a Point than a character.

Again, none of these things would be a problem if the movie fully embraced its own abstraction. There’s a weak, Hollywood-friendly structure here of lessons learned and conflicts resolved, but beyond Mother’s insular world of ambition and longing and stasis, nothing has been fleshed out in a way that supports the story. The film perches itself between projection and reality — it’s full of those by-now cliché little projections where a character imagines herself doing something violent to somebody before revealing that, no, she didn’t really do that at all — so that we never quite know if what we’re seeing is fact or not. So the movie goes in circles, constantly expounding on the same things. It has lots of insight, but little momentum. Then again, maybe that’s the idea.

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Childhood and first acting experience

Training in chicago theaters, beginnings in film, breakthrough with revolutionary road and sundry bad guys, playing elvis, estragon, and george jones, directorial debut.

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Michael Shannon

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Born in Kentucky and trained in Chicago theater , Michael Shannon emerged in the early 21st century as a versatile actor in film and television . Known for the combustible intensity he brings to his performances, Shannon has excelled at playing sadistic villains, music icons, uptight bureaucrats , mystified dads, and various unforgettable eccentrics . His notable roles include those in the films Revolutionary Road (2008) and Nocturnal Animals (2016) and the TV miniseries George & Tammy (2022–23), all of which garnered him awards nominations.

• Full name: Michael Corbett Shannon
• Born: August 7, 1974, Lexington , Kentucky, U.S.
• Occupation: film , television , and stage actor, director, and producer
• Honors: Oscar nominations for best supporting actor in Revolutionary Road (2008) and Nocturnal Animals (2016), Tony nomination for best featured actor in Long Day’s Journey into Night (2016), Emmy nomination for lead actor in a miniseries in George & Tammy (2022–23)
• Fun facts: founding ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago ; first film role was as a WrestleMania -loving bridegroom in Groundhog Day (1993); front man of a rock band called Corporal

Shannon’s parents—Geraldine Hine, a lawyer, and Donald Shannon, a professor—divorced when he was a child. His father moved from Lexington , Kentucky, to the suburbs of Chicago , where he became an accounting professor at DePaul University , and Shannon spent several years bouncing between both places. He has described himself as having been a loner with few friends while growing up and has said that his first passion was music . When he was about 11 years old, however, he saw a production of Samuel Beckett ’s play Waiting for Godot that was staged outdoors in a school playground. He told Interview magazine in 2023 , “It made a huge impression on me. I think it is probably one of the things that’s responsible for me getting into the theater in the first place.”

Shannon attended three different high schools, the last of which offered him his first chance to act. In an interview with Chicago magazine in 2015 , he relates that after appearing in a school production of Shakespeare ’s The Taming of the Shrew , he was inspired to start auditioning locally: “I got a part in  Loving Little Egypt  at the Griffin Theatre [in Chicago]. The drama teacher at Evanston Township [High School] came to me then and offered me a role. But I said, ‘I can’t. I’ve got this job in, like, real theater. I’m in this now. This is a paying thing.’ She told me I’d gotten in too fast, too deep.”

Thoroughly hooked on acting , he dropped out of school at age 16 to pursue his new passion full-time. Throughout the 1990s he performed in Chicago-area theaters of all kinds, including the prestigious Steppenwolf and Lookingglass theater companies. In 1993 he cofounded (with Guy Van Swearingen and Lawrence Grimm) A Red Orchid Theatre , a storefront theater space on the city’s north side.

“Chicago turned out to be where I learned how to act, where I got my opportunities, where I met the people who would be the greatest influence on my life.”—Michael Shannon, 2015

Two of Shannon’s earliest roles in Chicago brought him into the orbit of actor and playwright Tracy Letts , and their friendship would prove to be life-changing for Shannon. In 1993 Shannon originated the role of Chris Smith, a young man who teams up with his father to plot his mother’s murder, in Letts’s ultraviolent black comedy Killer Joe . Three years later Shannon took on the part of Peter Evans, a Persian Gulf War veteran who believes that his blood is infested with insects , in Letts’s dark love story Bug , which debuted in London . Both roles secured his notoriety for playing characters at the margins of society. He reprised his role in Bug several times, including in an Off-Broadway production in New York City in 2004, which earned him an Obie Award.

As Shannon racked up impressive credits in theater, he also began working in films. His first big-screen role was as a newlywed stoked to get WrestleMania tickets from Bill Murray ’s formerly disgruntled weatherman in the comedy Groundhog Day (1993). In 1999 Shannon moved to Los Angeles , and two years later he appeared in the big-budget feature Pearl Harbor (2001). Immediately after its premiere, however, he returned to Chicago and to Red Orchid to do more theater work, including another staging of Bug . He told the Chicago Reader , “I think the time I spent in L.A. I got confused. On one hand I was having success, being involved with big pictures, but I sensed myself getting smaller as an actor, not doing anything stimulating. I had to do this before going on.”

As with his stage work, many of Shannon’s early film roles were villains or social outcasts, to which he brought a visceral intensity that made him stand out to critics. In 8 Mile (2002), a film loosely based on the life of rapper Eminem (who stars in the movie), Shannon plays the abusive boyfriend of the rapper’s mother (played by Kim Basinger ). In 2006 he starred in the film adaptation of Bug , directed by William Friedkin and costarring Ashley Judd. A year later Shannon collaborated for the first time with director Jeff Nichols on Shotgun Stories , in which Shannon plays one of two half brothers who begin a feud after their father dies.

In 2008 Shannon broke through in a big way in Revolutionary Road , directed by Sam Mendes . Shannon stole the scenes as John Givings, a troubled math genius whose outspoken anti-authoritarian streak brings welcome disruption to the lives of an unhappy suburban couple ( Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet ). He was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor.

His subsequent performances included a matricidal maniac in Werner Herzog ’s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) and predatory rock music producer Kim Fowley in the biopic The Runaways (2010). That same year Shannon began acting in the TV series Boardwalk Empire (2010–14) as the tightly wound, hypocritical Nelson Van Alden, a Prohibition agent who becomes a henchman for gangster Al Capone (Stephen Graham).

Michael Shannon has played Superman ’s nemesis General Zod in three films:

• Man of Steel (2013)
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
• The Flash (2023)

In 2011 Shannon reteamed with Nichols for the powerful psychological thriller Take Shelter , in which he stars as a small-town husband and father who becomes troubled by increasingly ominous apocalyptic visions. In his review in The Hollywood Reporter , movie critic David Rooney wrote , “With his sad-eyed intensity and a towering physicality almost like that of Frankenstein ’s monster, there’s possibly no more mesmerizing American actor working in any medium today than Michael Shannon.” The following year he appeared in his third Nichols movie, Mud , and in The Iceman as real-life serial killer Richard Kuklinski . He was just as ruthless as real estate agent Rick Carver in Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes (2014), a drama set during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–08 . For that performance he was nominated for a best supporting actor Golden Globe Award .

By 2016 Shannon’s film and TV career had become especially prolific . That year he appeared in 10 films, including 2 more collaborations with Nichols in the sci-fi thriller Midnight Special and the historical drama Loving , about the 1967 Loving v. Virginia legal case . With Tom Ford ’s metafictional film Nocturnal Animals , Shannon plays a terminally ill Texas lawman and earned his second Oscar nomination for best supporting actor . He was also a surprisingly convincing Elvis Presley in Elvis & Nixon , a film that imagines what went on in “the King’s” fabled meeting with U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon ( Kevin Spacey ) in 1970. Critics praised Shannon and Spacey for not reducing Presley and Nixon to caricatures . Variety wrote, “Both actors manage to delve past superficial impersonation and deliver a fresh understanding of what makes these men tick.” Elvis & Nixon also marked Shannon’s first credit as an executive producer.

Somehow, Shannon still found time to work in theater. That same year he played James Tyrone, Jr., in a Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill ’s Long Day’s Journey into Night , garnering him a Tony Award nomination for best featured actor in a play and a Drama Desk Award for outstanding featured actor. Among the other stage roles he made time for amid his busy film and TV career were Johnny in a 2019 Broadway production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and Estragon in a 2023 Off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot , the same play that had sparked his interest in theater as a child.

Although Shannon continued to rule the screen in ultimate bad-guy roles, such as the sadistic government agent in Guillermo del Toro ’s The Shape of Water (2017), he occasionally showed off his comedy chops in such films as the Christmas movie Pottersville (2017) and the hit murder-mystery Knives Out (2019).

In 2022 Shannon got to display his musical talent in George & Tammy , a Showtime miniseries about the rocky romance of country music legends George Jones and Tammy Wynette (played by Jessica Chastain ). An amateur musician who leads a rock band called Corporal, Shannon performed his own vocals in his role as Jones. In an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , he told Colbert that playing Jones, considered by many critics to have been country’s greatest male singer, was “very intimidating.” When asked to compare the experience of playing two music icons—Jones and Elvis—Shannon said, “I just came to love the stuffing out of both of them.” George & Tammy ’s premiere was the most-watched premiere in Showtime’s history. Shannon was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance as Jones.

Michael Shannon had to learn how to drive a car for his role in Midnight Special (2016), directed by Jeff Nichols. But when he was cast as a motorcycle gang member in Nichols’s film The Bikeriders (2023), he balked , telling the director, “I don’t have to learn how to ride, do I?” In a podcast interview Nichols joked that during filming, “We barely let him lean on a motorcycle.”

In 2023 Shannon directed his first film, Eric Larue , a drama about the mother (Judy Greer) of a school shooter. It received generally favorable reviews. The following year Shannon returned to Red Orchid to act in the world premiere of Turret , a play by Levi Holloway about two men hiding in an underground bunker in the Pacific Northwest . He also appeared in his seventh Nichols film, The Bikeriders , in which he gave a scenery-chewing performance as a 1960s-era motorcycle gang member.

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‘nightbitch’ review: motherhood gets a brilliant amy adams barking mad in a satire that promises ferociousness but pulls too many punches.

Scoot McNairy also stars in Marielle Heller’s adaptation of the Rachel Yoder novel about a stay-at-home mom transformed by resentment toward the trap of domesticity.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Nightbitch looks sharp — crisp and clear in the daylight and plunged into mysterious, moody depths after dark. But the project calls for the more daring Heller who savored the savage wit and unapologetically abrasive edges of her protagonist in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Instead, the writer-director curbs the chaos far too swiftly, as if she hasn’t yet shaken off the consolatory warmth of Mr. Rogers, whose life and work she celebrated in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood .

The plot bears similarities to Marianna Palka’s 2017 indie horror-comedy Bitch , with Jason Ritter and Jaime King, which also got off to a fierce start then didn’t fully deliver. Both films seek to debunk the Mommy Culture notion that the experience of childbirth magically turns women into selfless creatures able to find fulfillment in their complete dedication to the little humans they hatched — as if giving birth automatically changes a woman’s genetic wiring.

Adams is reason enough to see it anyway in a performance that gives us intimate access to her character’s fears and anxieties. She brings expert comic timing to the woman identified in the credits only as Mother and has a sly way of drawing us into her way of thinking, not exactly normalizing the bizarre physical changes and unnatural impulses she’s experiencing but gradually accepting them with something closer to amusement than alarm.

Mother was an accomplished artist, known for sculptures and installations, before she gave up her career to stay home and look after a son she calls Baby (played by adorable twins Arleigh Patrick and Emmett James Snowden) while her Husband ( Scoot McNairy ) strolls off to work in a job that keeps him away for days at a time. Like Adams’ character, neither the father nor son is given a name.

A funny opening scene in that temple of the homemaker, the supermarket, has the frazzled-looking Mother, tired-eyed and puffy, pushing Baby in a grocery cart when she runs into her sleekly put-together replacement in her former gallery job. When the colleague asks Mother how she’s doing, she lets loose a spectacular rant about being subsumed by the numbing routines of maternal responsibility, with an incongruously chipper sweetness despite her desperation and simmering anger.

Adams plays Mother’s growing exasperation in moments like that with the infuriated impatience of the countless women who ever felt like unpaid round-the-clock servants, with husbands who remain willfully oblivious to the demands of the job. But without diminishing the bone-deep exhaustion, Adams’ light touch also makes it funny — never more so than when Husband sheepishly proposes sex (“Do you wanna…?”) and she replies with a weary “God, no.”

Two years after the birth of her child, she feels irrelevant, erased. While she’s out for a rare evening off with old art-world colleagues she admits with a frankness devoid of self-pity that she’s become “just this sagging mom with nothing intelligent to add to the conversation.”

“What fresh hell awaits you today?” Mother asks the bathroom mirror, as it starts getting harder to dismiss the strange things happening to her as perimenopausal side-effects. Her sense of smell is heightened, her teeth look sharper, dogs start being drawn to her in the park, she sprouts patches of fur, gets a freakish surprise when she pops what she thinks is a cyst on her lower back and another when she looks down and discovers extra nipples.

Self-doubt has eaten away Mother’s sense of who she is. When she makes the poignant realization that she’s no longer an artist (“the most silly, self-absorbed thing you can be”) and is now free to share in every moment of Baby’s development, she’s talking herself into it rather than believing it. But once she starts running with the pack, she is reborn as “woman and animal, new and ancient,” vowing to feel shame no more. These scenes have a dangerous thrill, a raw power the movie could use more of.

Maybe decisions were made in the editing room to trim the surreal, four-legged night flights, but it’s perplexing that Heller loses interest so quickly in the canid allegorical thrust that drives Mother’s cathartic self-renewal. It undersells Adams’ full-throttle commitment to the role’s extremes by reducing her weird and wonderful nocturnal forays into a stepping-stone toward a more equitable balance in the marriage.

While McNairy makes Husband annoyingly inattentive, the actor is also careful not to let him become a complete douche. There’s humor in his admission that solo Baby duty — which allows Mother to throw herself back into her art — is hard.  But it feels like a betrayal of the story’s whole reason for being that his redemption takes up so much space.

There’s narrative texture in Mother’s recollections of a childhood in what appears to be a Mennonite community, which she thought she had archived away, and her new affinity for the sadness of her mother, who briefly fled the constraints of domesticity but came back, with no explanation. There’s also enigmatic librarian Norma (Jessica Harper), who seems to get exactly what Mother is going through, recommending that she read a mystical manual titled A Field Guide to Magical Women . But these threads feel naggingly incomplete.

Her encounters with three other mothers she meets at the library’s Book Babies circle (led in song by the film’s inventive composer and the director’s brother, Nate Heller) are more satisfying. At first, she rolls her eyes and scoffs inwardly at the simplistic thought that the commonalities of being moms should make her enjoy the company of other moms. But as she gets to know Jen (Zoë Chao), Miriam (Mary Holland) and Liz (Archana Rajan), they drop subtle clues that there could be something more to them than their designated parenting roles.

Those wry scenes hint at the more complex and subversive movie Nightbitch could have been had it expanded the fantastical escapes of one severely stressed woman with a husband who just doesn’t get it into a broader and spikier examination of maternal confinement. The title and setup promise something truly feral, but the movie essentially gets spayed.

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