There’s a common news adage used in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler: “If it bleeds, it leads.” The one word I’d use to describe the legacy of this movie is prescient
Gilroy’s breakneck crime thriller takes this adage and translates it into the twenty-first-century version we know today: “If it screams, it streams.”
It also taps into so many other concepts that are near and dear to the heart of millennials that it feels like the millennial movie.
Nightcrawler centers around Lou Bloom, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. He is a wayward thirtysomething who is trying to scheme and plot his way into entrepreneurship or a career.
First by stealing copper wire, fencing, and manhole covers to sell for scrap metal, then by flat-out robbing a man for his watch.
Finally, after a chance encounter with a cameraman filming the scene of a crime to sell the footage to news stations, he sets his sights on that business.
After trading a stolen bicycle for a camcorder and a police scanner, he quickly hits the streets to find crime scenes, accidents, and other gory footage to sell to the TV news stations.
He scales his business and things quickly spiral out of control. Bloom, and his young assistant Rick, start tip-toeing moral boundaries before flat-out sprinting past them.
However, the plot, the cinematography, the acting, and everything that went into making such a great movie is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to legacy.
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- Photo Credit: Still from "Nightcrawler" via Open Road Films
Nightcrawler’s legacy is that it perfectly crystalizes the millennial experience. Perhaps the best way of explaining this movie’s legacy is by discussing the wave of true crime that came after it.
That isn’t to say Nightcrawler caused that wave, it just had its finger so on the pulse it knew exactly what we wanted. It was hardly more than a year later that the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer gripped the entire country.
Hundreds of more prominent documentaries, miniseries, and more invaded Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and the rest of the streaming platforms. We are completely obsessed with tragedy, murder, chaos, and gore.
These types of documentaries and serial killer movies have always existed in one way or another, from Lifetime to the Big Screen, but it wasn’t until Nightcrawler that it became such a huge business.
The other aspect of millennial life that Nightcrawler completely nails is the idea of the side hustle. Our generation treats the side hustle like a rite of passage, whether it becomes your full-time job or not.
Not only does Bloom launch his business, but he openly flouts how many self-help and personal development books he reads. He even brags that he took a business course online.
Bloom is never more of a millennial than in the scenes where he is talking about his business and mentoring his assistant, Rick. He speaks almost exclusively in buzzwords, corporatisms, and book excerpts.
This thriller portrays the harsh realities about corporations and the economy incredibly well. In one scene we see Bloom trying to talk his way into a job at the scrapyard where he sells his stolen metal scraps.
He first asks for a job and then offers to work as an unpaid intern. Not only does he get turned down for the job but the owner won’t even allow him to work for free because he “don’t hire thieves.”
It felt like a funny moment in 2014, but rewatching it in 2024 felt more sad than anything. It felt like an honest reflection on how many companies and corporations feel about people.
We’ll buy stolen goods, but we’d never hire a thief.
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- Photo Credit: Still from "Nightcrawler" via Open Road Films
Simply hitting the nail on the head about millennial life wasn’t enough, however. In order for all of that to matter, the movie had to also be good. If you divorce yourself from all the above components of the film, it also works incredibly well as a thriller.
The pulse-pounding action scenes during which Bloom is lurking with a camera, Rick close by, are exhilarating. As horrible as Bloom is, the audience is rooting for him and his business, Video Production News: A news gathering service, for most of the movie.
It’s one of the best examples of an anti-hero in modern movie history.
What makes Nightcrawler so unique is that he is the audience’s gateway into the film—especially millennials—and he also represents everything we hate and work against in modern life.
This duality resonates with audiences of all ages because there is no one among us who hasn’t wrestled with our moral code in the face of tough economic conditions or at the request of an unscrupulous boss.
It forces the audience to wrestle with our own complicity in all the world’s problems while also entertaining and thrilling us. That is no easy feat.
Gilroy gives us our medicine but he makes it taste sweet so that we don’t mind.
