Nocturnal Animals (2016) movie review.

Nocturnal Animals is a cruel thriller. It is intense and creepy, but some parts of it are not just dark, but fascinating as well. This movie is directed and written by Tom Ford. The story is very complicated, it contains three different timelines. 

In the first one - present, Susan ( Amy Adams) is an owner of an art gallery, living in Los Angeles with her rich husband (Armie Hammer). Their relationship is cold and it looks like they are about to break off. Her life is full of disappointments, but still, she achieved stability and even behave like it is all right. She receives a manuscript of a new novel called Nocturnal Animals, which is dedicated to Susan, written by her ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) , with whom she poorly broke twenty years ago. And now she decides to read this novel and we visually see, what she learns. 

This is a second timeline - fictional. A story of a man and his wife and daughter. They are on a trip to some little town in Texas, they drive on a lonely road at night. Before this part of the movie, events have already been rough and harsh, but it gets even more, when this poor family was forced of the road and intimidated by three impulsive freaks, who are no more than just local bandits. They stop this family, start blaming for nothing, then playing with them, which makes these three so bad and annoying. And Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who plays one of them, does a good job of making the audience nervous. So the husband who was also played by Gyllenhaal, just can not protect his family and they got kidnapped after all. Reading that Susan, in present day, is shocked by the content of the novel, how dark it is, and we see it, as the tone of the movie goes tougher. 

In the third time line we see relationship between young Edward and Susan, before and after they married, it explains a lot for two other timelines and adds character development for Susan. She is so different after twenty years. So these three stories are connected and supplement each other and make each one another more understandable.

The story within the story is the main part in the movie. It has Gyllenhaal( as Tony, the husband), Michael Shannon (as the policeman) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (as the bad guy). This story is so dark and interesting, that it really thrills. And overall, it is so sad, that even feels tragic. But, in the same time it is well told, makes you think and touches you. 

Maybe the contents of this story sometimes creepy, but it is a good combination of dark and intimidating tone with amazing performances by everyone in the movie, which makes it even great, but overall, I didn't like this film. For me it is too much, the tone of the movie is too scary. The opening thing is just way too much, so overall, I am not a big fan of bad and ugly stories. This movie is just not for me, but I really appreciate the story, it is something.