Nightmare Fuel / Nightcrawler

• The opening scene, where Lou seemingly kills a security guard at a railyard for his watch by strangling him.
• Lou's face as he watches the report from the home invasion on TV.
• The Fridge Horror with the nursery in the house, was the baby kidnapped? Was there ever a baby?
  • What if the woman on the bed was pregnant, and the nursery was set up for a newborn? It takes Lou's coldness to another level again.
• Also, when Lou lists off his demands to Nina when a negotiation between them goes a bit pear-shaped, he approaches her with each consecutive sentence, and the camera keeps adjusting to make it look as though he's growing, looming over her.
• The bloody aftermath of the home invasion.
• Lou's emotionless stare as he watches Rick bleed out from multiple gunshot wounds.
• Lou's animalistic rage at his apartment after he failed to get any footage for Nina that's worth airing (as in the page image). The break from his typically calm demeanor is what makes it so jarring and frankly terrifying. It's likely the only genuine emotion we see from him in the entire movie.
  • Made even more unsettling when it was revealed that Jake Gyllenhaal actually did that....but got so into it that he smashed the mirror and cut his hand in the process. The director was so impressed that he kept it in.
• The use of music throughout the film rather brilliantly and grimly reflects the sociopathic behavior of the characters, with melodic, inspirational, and almost religious hymns playing when Lou gets a "perfect" shot of bloody carnage, showing that Lou doesn't care about the people hurt by the crimes he's recording, but rather sees them as things that will advance his career.
  • Averting any medical help for the sole breathing survivor of the carnage. Even "cutting" that part out to the news station to evade ethical repercussions.
• Even Lou Bloom's appearance is creepy as hell. Jake Gyllenhaal notably lost 20 pounds for the role to give him the look of, in his own words, "a hungry coyote". And good god does it show, as in some scenes Gyllenhaal almost looks ghoulish! Not to mention his eyes - it looks like there is nothing even remotely human left within them.
• Joe momentarily staring at Lou after the former's van crashing into a lamppost while being placed on a stretcher bleeding out. Lou before hand cut the brakes to his news van to cause the heinous accident. What really sells the scene is the nightmarish tension between the two... Especially, that cold expression Lou gives.
  • Worse, whilst speeding to reach the crash site, Rick bemoans aloud why he and Lou aren't on their way to film a rape victim and are instead heading to film a head-on crash. Lou knows that since the reported vehicle is a van, it must be Joe who has crashed, as Lou tampered with his van's brakes, and is hurrying to film Joe's crippling injuries (and possible death) as a final "fuck you" to his biggest rival.

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