Nocturnal Animals

This had been on my list for quite some time, a couple years in fact, before it finally turned up. I was so excited. The description -- a woman becoming obsessed with the disturbing manuscript sent to her by an ex-husband she left 20 years ago -- intrigued me. It could be the launchpad of a fantastic psychological thriller, or even an outright horror movie. And it stars Amy Adams, who is incapable of a bad performance? Hook it directly into my veins! And then I finally got an opportunity to watch it. And I got to watch this movie absolutely crash and burn in two separate but equal ways. I was left slack-jawed at how unbelievably bad this, and how much my opinion seems to differ from the consensus. The first failure is the glaring and offensive misogyny of this entire movie. The whole story of the movie is "this poor man got hurt in a divorce and has been stewing about it for twenty years". Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Edward, got dumped by Adams' Susan because he was going nowhere as a writer and she didn't want to live on hopes and dreams. Edward couldn't handle that he was rendered powerless in ending a marriage, and was further enraged that, after leaving him, discovered she was pregnant and aborted their baby. So he spends twenty years writing a self-insertion novel, where he gets to avenge the rape and murder of his wife and daughter, and we, the audience get to see the book brought to life, inter-cut with Susan in the modern day, being moved to the point of obsessing over this book. Her marriage seems to be falling apart, so it is the perfect opportunity for her to dwell on the past. He names the book after a nickname he gave Susan during their marriage, as she has long been plagued by insomnia, and he dedicates the book to her. Nocturnal Animals is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the groin in its messaging. Edward was wronged, it says; Susan had no right to exert her agency. She had no right to change as a person, to be unsatisfied with her life, to make decisions without him. This misogyny extends to the very fabric of the movie itself. There are four female roles in the movie. Three of them combined have, perhaps, fifteen lines? Two of the roles -- the daughter in the story and Susan's daughter -- have nude scenes. The wife in the book is played by Isla Fisher, an obvious stand-in for Adams, driving home the point that the wife character in the book is Susan. And Adams herself? She spends 65% of this movie reading a book, or reacting to the book, or laying around on the couch, in bed, at a meeting, staring vacuously while she mulls over the book. Tom Ford somehow took one of this generation's most reliable, can't-miss actors and gave her nothing to do, just so he could bring to life this bitter, virulent, woman-hating travesty of a script. I mean, there is literally a scene where Adams' character, an administrator at an art gallery, is standing in front of a piece of art that just has the word REVENGE on it, and she doesn't remember buying it. Get it? Because she doesn't realize she "bought" "revenge" from Edward when she left him? Oh, I forgot there are a few more "female" roles. They're part of a living art installation that opens the movie. They're all obese majorettes, dancing nude in videos on the gallery walls and posing live in the gallery. I'm not sure what the hell they're supposed to represent, but it comes off as "ha ha look at the fatties, aren't they gross". But let's set all the creepy misogyny both within the movie and outside it aside for a moment, and analyze the film at face value, because even there, Nocturnal Animals can't justify its own existence. Susan clearly identifies the book is a piece of actualized trauma-processing with characters representing Edward, herself, and the child she aborted. The use of Isla Fisher as a stand-in within the story, as well as young redheaded actors who look very similar (India Menuez plays her daughter, while Ellie Bamber plays the daughter within the story), shows she's recognized it and put herself and her daughter into the story. Now, that last part is whole other question, because the daughter Susan has is with her current husband, so, ew, gross, but that's beside the point (and also tracks to the misogyny again). She recognizes this for what it is ... AND SHE KEEPS READING. She doesn't get to what is essentially her own violent rape and murder on paper and toss it in the fireplace. She keeps reading, as the character in the book stews and hates himself for not having the power or the courage to change things. One killer gets killed in a bank robbery, one gets arrested and there's enough evidence, and one gets away. Thanks to the help of an FBI agent dying of lung cancer, they exert some extra-judicial justice on the remaining two, so hey, we can toss in some right-wing political fantasies in there too. This is the story that moved her. This is the story we have to watch unfold in her mind. A weak, southern-fried, Death Wish ripoff. This bland regurgitation of cliches seen in hundreds of action movies from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Good man with a family stumbles into a bad situation, wife and kid killed, seeks revenge. That's half the filmography of Seagal, JCVD, and dozens of other middling, direct-to-video actors. Somehow, this lump of tropes and cliches moved Susan. And furthermore, this cold plate of week-old leftovers took Edward TWENTY YEARS to write. He ground an axe for his ex for two full decades, ignored writing anything else (because the movie tells us he's finally managed to complete a book, so this must be his first) and this was the best he could do. My own creative writing from when I was 14 was less hackneyed than this. This story wouldn't be good enough to be a Tubi original, but Nocturnal Animals would have us believe it is some profound, emotional journey that melts the icy heart of Susan and makes her question her life choices. Bullshit. Bull. Shit. This movie is a crime. It spends two hours, screaming at the top of its lungs, how cruel and unthinking women can be when they think for themselves. It is the incel frame of mind made into art. All the beautiful shots and the near Herculean performances of Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who understood the trashy assignment given them) can't change the fact that this is an ugly, hateful, miserable piece of excrement that wastes Amy Adams' talents on staring into the middle distance when she isn't feeling sorry for making her own decisions. Writer/director Tom Ford clearly has problems with women, but we shouldn't have to be victimized by his manifesto-style ramblings for two hours because he couldn't get a date to junior prom. There's an saying that if you meet one nasty person in a day, they're probably the asshole, but if everybody you meet is nasty, you're probably the asshole. Tom, you;re the asshole. Go sort yourself out, and do it without wasting my time.