Source: This post was derived from today’s journal entry
I just finished watching Nocturnal Animals. Tom Ford’s 2016 thriller-noir is not just a movie—it’s an assault on your sense of safety. And honestly? That’s exactly what great cinema should do sometimes.
You know the one. The highway sequence. A family traveling on an empty road at night. The vulnerability is palpable—you can feel it in your gut. The way the tension builds, the way the threat materializes out of nowhere, the way helplessness sets in.
When they ran to their car and those men jumped in, forcefully driving it away, leaving the husband behind—I felt it. Physically. Goosebumps. Heart racing. That primal fear we try to ignore.
What makes this scene so effective is its realism. There’s no dramatic music swelling to warn you. No hero moment where someone saves the day. Just raw, unfiltered violence and the complete breakdown of safety. It’s the kind of scene that stays with you long after the credits roll.
This movie makes you angry. Not at the film itself, but at the recognition it forces upon you. The kind of monsters that are out there. The reality that violence exists, that predators exist, that the world isn’t always a safe place.
But there’s another layer to that anger. It becomes fuel. It motivates you to become someone who can stand against that darkness. Someone who can protect. Someone who won’t be helpless.
We need movies like Nocturnal Animals not because they’re pleasant, but because they’re true. They remind us that evil exists, that vulnerability is real, and that we should never take safety for granted.
Sometimes art’s job isn’t to comfort us—it’s to wake us up.
If you haven’t seen it, be prepared. This isn’t entertainment. It’s a mirror. And what it reflects back might just change how you see the world.