The long-anticipated Nightmare Alley official trailer is here. Guillermo Del Toro’s latest is a bit of a foray into film noir. While Nightmare Alley may be void of monsters and the supernatural, it still features monsters of the human variety. In a carnival filled with charlatans and grifters, swindlers and exploitation, Del Toro uses the carnival sideshow setting as “a microcosm of the world.“
Nightmare Alley was made into a film starring Tyrone Power in 1947, but Del Toro drew inspiration from the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham. In discussing writing the screenplay with Kim Morgan, in a Vanity Fair interview, Del Toro says, “We started from the novel, and didn’t want to do a remake as much as a new adaptation.”
Bradley Cooper stars as Stanton Carlisle, a master grifter who leaves the carnival life behind and puts his skills to use in the real world, swindling the rich and elite with what they believe to be supernatural abilities. While this may not be the horror Del Toro fans tend to associate him with, judging from the trailer, it certainly has the Del Toro touch, echoes of genre still weaving their way into the look and feel. Nightmare Alley, aptly, has an otherworldly, fantastical nightmare quality to it.
Del Toro’s re-imagining stars a hard-hitting ensemble cast including Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman and Toni Collette. We can’t wait to see what awaits us in Nightmare Alley come December.
Take a peek at the teaser trailer below:
