Prime Video has just added one of the best thriller movies of the decade

Stephen Porzio

The film also has one of the best final scenes in recent memory.

Prime Video has just added Nightmare Alley, the excellent 2021 neo-noir psychological thriller co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro (Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water).

The movie is based on the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name, which was previously made into another great film in the 1940s starring Tyrone Power.

This new version of the story, however, sees Bradley Cooper play the charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle, who gets a job working at a travelling carnival in the ’40s.

Becoming skilled at performing as a mentalist, Stanton eventually ditches the carnival with his kind wife, Molly (Rooney Mara), and uses his newly acquired knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of New York society.

As his ambitions grow, he sets out to con a dangerous tycoon (Richard Jenkins) with the help of a mysterious psychiatrist named Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett).

However, it’s the latter who might wind up being Stanton’s “most formidable opponent yet.

Nightmare Alley boasts a large ensemble cast that also includes David Strathairn, Holt McCallany, Mary Steenburgen, Ron Perlman, Toni Collette and Willem Dafoe.

Thanks to its tremendous period production design, its dark and foreboding twist on the notion of the American dream and its knockout final scene that puts a perfectly twisted bow on everything that came before, the movie was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture.

Holding an 80% Rotten Tomatoes score, you can read a sample of some rave reviews for Nightmare Alley below:

Chicago Sun-Times: “[The characters] are fascinatingly terrible, and if they get what’s coming to ’em, it’s because they deserve it, and that makes for an entertaining, wall-to-wall watch. This is an A-list rendition of a classic B-movie formula.”

The Guardian: “Guillermo del Toro hits us with a spectacular noir melodrama boasting gruesomely enjoyable performances and freaky twists.”

The Observer (UK): “From its bruised colour palette to its spiralling descent into madness and degradation, this is deliciously damnable fare, looking back through the prism of Del Toro’s adventurous oeuvre to the existential angst of his vampiric feature debut, Cronos.”

Rolling Stone: “[The] descent is carried by the fearless scumminess of Cooper’s remarkable performance. Always an actor who’s best when tetchily undermining his own alpha swagger, he’s equally impossible to love and look away from.”