There's a fair few movies that serve as touchstones for Nightcrawler. Lou Bloom is a more world-aware (and therefore more unnerving) version of Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, while the stylish structure, bright lights and music choices have led to various comparisons to Drive. But the film that Nightcrawler directly references in its final moments is The Usual Suspects (so naturally spoilers for that film abound in the section). Think about how Nightcrawler's final act run-in with the police goes. Lou is held and questioned by a police officer who goes to great pains to make themselves seem physically imposing, to whom he spins an elaborate fake story that manages to name-check all the true elements. He then is freed, walking away from the station removing the façade of an honest. It's similar to the ending of Bryan Singer's crime masterpiece in basic idea, but in execution it's almost identical. The framing (and we know that's important as he explicitly states it) of Lou leaving the prison exactly copies the Keyser Söze reveal, with the focus on the watch recalling one of the more subtle clues about the identity of The Usual Suspect's crime lord. These parallels are far from incidental, turning the films into mirrors of each other. In The Usual Suspects, leaving the police station is a massive rug-pull, throwing the whole movie into question. In Nightcrawler, having known the score with Lou from the off (the first scene shows him murder a guy after all), we know that just because he's crafted this massive hoax doesn't make him anything more than a disturbed person. It prompts a reconsideration of the projected image of Söze as the prince of darkness, extrapolating to the general idea of things looking, rather than being, real.
