Guillermo del Toro has made an exceptional career exploring the worlds of fantasy and monsters, including Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, his Best Picture-winning The Shape of Water, and his latest film, Frankenstein. But Nightmare Alley is something of an outlier for the famed Mexican director. It’s his first (and currently only) foray into the noir genre, and it doesn’t have any creatures we’ve come to expect from del Toro’s work. Well, it doesn’t have monsters, but it certainly has positively monstrous humans.
Stanton “Stan” Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is down on his luck. After setting a house on fire, he wanders to a nearby carnival, where something catches his eye: a geek show. Not to be confused with our contemporary understanding of geek culture, a geek in the carnival world was a desperate man chasing chickens and devouring them. Geeks were often addicts paid in booze or narcotics. This geek Stan encounters is treated appallingly, locked up in a cage when not performing. Yet Stan can’t hide his fascination.
