7 Films That Make Interesting Points On Society
2. Nightcrawler - The Media's Glorification Of Violence And Tragedies
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a psychopath. There is no doubt about that.
But throughout the film, he is enabled and rewarded by people who share his off-putting response to death and violence in the world. His discovery of an industry that profits (and maybe even delights?) in horror is an unsettling catalyst within the film; but when you break down the justification of the other characters you start to see it's not too different from what we have right now.
Go onto a streaming service or scroll through a podcast app and you're guaranteed to find an entire library of true crime documentaries and deep-dives that seem to be scratching a certain itch modern media has latched on to.
Making A Murderer, Don't F**k With Cats and the My Favorite Murder podcast are flagships for a genre of entertainment where crime has become fetishized. At one point, Nightcrawler outwardly dissects why we are so drawn to these horrible stories in the first place.
In a world where consuming true crime has become normalized, Nightcrawler spells out for audiences how easily we are manipulated, and reminds us that just because we're not the ones filming the horror, doesn't mean we aren't participating.