Quartile rating: 8/10 · 2 ratings
Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.
Nocturnal Animals is a masterfully constructed psychological thriller with a layered story-within-a-story structure. Tom Ford's direction yields stunning, provocative cinematography — from the jarring opening sequence to the cold Texas noir of the inner narrative. Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal deliver career-level performances, with Michael Shannon earning an Oscar nomination. The dual-narrative conceit, exploring guilt, regret, and artistic revenge, is executed with real sophistication and visual confidence. The ending, however, is deliberately ambiguous to the point of frustrating incompleteness — it earns its thematic weight but leaves the emotional payoff slightly unsatisfying, preventing a full top score there.