The horror in a film like Nightcrawler doesn't come from all the violence and blood. It doesn't come from the fact that someone would take pleasure in filming brutal crime scenes either. It's that we as humans are attracted to these disturbing images so much that we, as a civilized society, collectively take pleasure in seeing the misfortunes of others; or that we need to know about the crimes of others in order to help us feel better about ourselves. Seeing the mutilated bodies of others allows us to shake our heads in contempt at the rest of humanity.
It's not just in video games that the cultural fascination with violence is evident; it's also in the market that seemingly upstanding adults, who would otherwise castigate violent games and movies as promoting it, pay tribute to it by boosting their ratings. Watching the news these days is a lot like playing a violent game. All the local crimes are broadcast on it, because if we aren't fascinated by artificial crime on the television we certainly are in real life. Such hypocrisy in the adult world wouldn't be so alarming if the same people who shunned violent games and movies weren't the same ones watching violence on the news to feed their fascination.
Jake Gyllenhaal was amazing this film- the best acting I've seen from him. He did a tremendous job as a renegade cameraman stalking the streets for news clips at random crime scenes.
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