Nocturnal Animals - Movie Review
July 16, 2024•307 words
How much I enjoyed it: 6/10
A woman receives a package containing a manuscript for a book written by her ex-husband. Her current husband leaves on a trip to NYC and she starts reading the manuscript.
As she reads, the movie’s storyline becomes that of the manuscript which opens with a couple and their daughter taking a roadtrip through the desert of West Texas. They’re driving through the night and they get stuck behind two cars driving slowly side by side. One of the cars drops back and the three young men inside starts harassing the family, ending with them pulling over. The scene ends with two of the guys leaving in their car with the daughter and wife while the third young man takes the father.
The father gets driven into the desert and dropped off. The next morning he stumbles into the nearest town, reports to the police station what happened, and gets a motel room. No sign of his wife and daughter.
The next day, a detective takes the father to investigate the scene of the crime and they find the bodies of his wife and daughter, bloodied and raped.
The rest of the movie is finding the guys who did it and ends with one getting killed by the cop and one getting killed by the father.
Throughout that storyline, it cuts to the original woman, whose living in Los Angeles, and it’s revealed that she left her ex-husband because she didn’t believe in his ability to make it as a writer. The story keeps bringing up painful memories of their time together. And the father in the story is the same actor as the ex (played by Jake Gyllenhaal).
In the final scene of the movie, she is supposed to meet up with her ex for dinner but he never shows up.