Nightmare Alley Review: A gritty look behind the carnival curtains

Hes’s search leads him to a travelling carnival with the type of diverse cast of characters you would expect to find, alongside one or two you might not. The film is set in the early 1940s and comes with the sights and sounds accurate to the time. The carnies are a makeshift group of those society consider oddballs and misfits but come together in their own family structure and genuinely care about each other.

They do not hesitate to take Stanton in as one of their own without asking questions. Carnival patriarch Clement “Clem” Hoatley, (played wonderfully by William Defoe) makes sure Stanton understands the rules around living within their community. Stanton very quickly begins to learn how best to manipulate different members of this family and while his charms don’t work on everyone, it was enough to give him access to some of the secrets behind the biggest carnival tricks

Nightmare Alley is what some might describe as a slow burner. It moves along at a methodical pace and while there are a few important events which occur in the first hour, it’s not necessarily high energy excitement and much more attention is paid to the delving deeper into the psyche of these fascinating yet reserved characters. The nature of their business demonstrates they are all comfortable with a level of deception which means that the morally ambiguous Stanton fits right in.

These characters are seen as freaks of nature and are happy to trade on these reputations. Deception is their business but unlike a simple magic trick, there is always something more sinister going on just below the surface. Gullermo del Toro excels at demonstrating just how terrible people can be to other people. Also, while the appearance of monsters, beasts and supernatural elements aren’t as prominent as in other Del Toro movies, he still manages to maintain a dark unnerving ‘monster’ feel.