NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021)
Brilliantly made, morally dark, and excessively disturbing.
Should You Watch It?
NIGHTMARE ALLEY is a brilliantly realized, striking production with superb performances and an evocative mood. It works as a dark morality tale about selfish ambition and pride, showing how a man’s desire for success and control leads him into deeper corruption.
That quality comes at a heavy cost. The film contains lots of strong foul language, very disturbing violence, implied adultery, brief explicit male nudity, and occult content. It also presents a politically correct, leftist view of America and the American Dream. The story offers some positive moral lessons, but its dark tragedy is excessive.
The practical answer is clear: despite its artistic strengths, skip this one.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESIn 1939, Stanton Carlisle joins a second-rate carnival and learns the secrets behind its mentalist act. He leaves with Molly, a young carnival woman, and two years later they perform a successful nightclub act in Buffalo.
When Stanton meets psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter, she helps him pursue a lucrative scheme involving a wealthy man grieving a devastating loss. Stanton’s ambition draws him into an increasingly dangerous attempt to deceive people who are desperate to believe him.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars means NIGHTMARE ALLEY succeeds strongly as filmmaking, even though its content makes it a poor recommendation. Guillermo Del Toro creates a striking production with an evocative mood and the edgy atmosphere of modern film noir.
The performances are superb, and the movie’s unusually long 150-minute running time does not erase its powerful visual and dramatic identity. The film is brilliantly realized and carefully shaped as a dark tragedy. Its final scene gives the fallen antihero recognition of how far he has fallen, though the resolution is not happy.
The Worldview
NIGHTMARE ALLEY presents a dark morality tale about a con man whose selfish ambition and pride get the better of him. It shows deceit, lying, betrayal, cheating, and the deliberate exploitation of grieving people. The film also depicts pretending to communicate with the dead as dangerous because people can be hurt, yet its Tarot Card scene ultimately validates the occult use of Tarot Cards by presenting a card as accurately foreshadowing the future.
The film’s moral framework recognizes that selfish ambition and pride lead to ruin. It also shows the consequences of manipulating people’s grief and using spiritual claims to bilk them. However, its disturbing, implicitly politically correct depiction of America and the American Dream gives the story a leftist perspective that departs from a biblical understanding of truth, responsibility, and human dignity.
The film’s warning about the desire for wealth aligns with Scripture: “But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare” (1 Timothy 6:9).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Dark morality tale with some strong amoral behavior about a con man who deliberately stood by while his sick elderly father died from an open window and who decides to pretend to be able to communicate with dead people so he can bilk rich men out of their money, but he gets his comeuppance when things go awry, though he ends up killing two other men, plus a dark and disturbing, implicitly politically correct depiction of America and the American Dream, and woman gives a Tarot Card reading to the lead male character, but he turns the negative third card around so that it appears positive to the woman but, of course, the card now give the man himself a negative reading, so the card foreshadows his fall even more strongly (ultimately, the scene is the one scene in the movie that validates the “truth” of the occult use of Tarot Cards)
Foul Language
About 14 obscenities (including eight “f” words and three or so “s” words), three GD profanities, one Jesus profanities, and seven light profanities)
Violence
Two or three very disturbing scenes of violence, other disturbing bits of violence, and some strong violence includes a crazed man appears to bite off the head of a chicken in a freak show, a man deliberately hits another man with his car and then backs the car up and deliberately runs over his body again, woman pretends to be electrocuted in an electric chair in a carnival act, man is shot dead, and another man is wounded by a bullet in one violent scene, man opens a window during the winter night and lets his sickly elderly father die in his bed from the blistering wind while he sits nearby wrapped in blankets, the son then sets the body and house on fire, middle-aged woman mourning the death of her son and fooled by a fake spiritualist decides to shoot her husband dead and then turns the gun on herself, and a woman pretends to be the ghost of a woman who died from a botched abortion and shows up outside at night with blood on the front of her white dress
Sex
Implied adulterous sex in one scene when married woman reaches her hand into a man’s bath water while her husband’s away and implied adulterous sex when unmarried woman opens her blouse to reveal the space between her breasts and married man kisses her chest there
Nudity
Brief male genital nudity obscured by water after man takes off his clothes and hops into the tub and upper and rear male nudity, plus woman reveals a scar under her breasts
Alcohol Use
Alcohol use, drunkenness, and an important side character is an alcoholic
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
Smoking, and man confesses he will spike an alcoholic bum’s drink with opium to get him to go crazy and actually bite off the heads of chickens as a carnival act;
Miscellaneous Immorality
Deceit, lying, betrayal, cheating.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
How does selfish ambition change Stanton’s choices, and what does Scripture say about the desire for wealth?
1 Timothy 6:9–10 · Matthew 6:19–21The film shows people exploiting grief for money. What responsibilities do we have when someone is vulnerable?
Philippians 2:3–4 · Proverbs 14:31Why is pretending to communicate with the dead dangerous, even when people want to believe it?
Deuteronomy 18:10–12 · Isaiah 8:19What is the difference between a dark warning about sin and a story that gives sin too much power or attention?
Ephesians 5:11–12 · Philippians 4:8The Final Word
NIGHTMARE ALLEY is striking and superbly performed, but its strong language, disturbing violence, sexual content, occult material, and worldview make it excessive. For your family or your own conscience, SKIP IT. For better choices, see.
