Nightmare Alley [Video Review]

Guillermo Del Toro‘s latest might not feel like a major departure from his general reputation as a creature-centric creator type, but there is a definite swerve into something that is more dark, and is more forbidding. Following his Best Picture winning The Shape of Water, for his eleventh film (and second straight with Searchlight) we find puppets but not the kind that are wooden and manipulated by string. In an ode to the original sources (both novel and the film before it), Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett and an all-star supporting players as cunning grabbing hands come calibrated for a tragi-canorous neo-noir item. Here is Nicholas Bell’s review: