Clip It: Each day, Jon Davis looks at the world of trailers, featurettes, and clips and puts it all in perspective.
Nocturnal Animals is another trailer I don't understand. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The tone of the movie is clear. And my sense is that that's what concerns director Tom Ford (A Single Man). As for the story, I don't have a great idea of what the movie is about.
We start with Amy Adams, who has a really nice house with bay windows. But beautiful homes don't mean much if you can't sleep well in them. She's an insomniac, and she tells a colleague that her ex husband (Jake Gyllenhaal) used to call her a “nocturnal animal,” which, okay, not common vernacular. So it makes sense he's a writer. What doesn't make sense is that he's written a book that may or may not be about Amy Adams and things she may or may not have done. It's clear he believes she did these things. She suggests that she did something. But what? Did she cheat? Did she steal his awesome house? Does it involve murder? Although it looks more like Jake's the one who's hiring a killer.
So it's a mind bender. But it looks creepy enough. The fun of this kind of thriller is playing with the audience's discomfort with the unknown. So this could be brilliant. Or it could be pretentious. It's definitely one or the other.
Which do you think it is.