Back in 2017, Guillermo del Toro created The Shape of Water, a flick that earned him a Best Director Oscar and also took home the award as Best Picture. Four years later, del Toro brought his follow-up, 2021’s Nightmare Alley.

Set in the late 1930s, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) heads out as a drifter and ends up with menial labor as part of a traveling carnival. Along the way, he works his way up the ranks and takes over as a “psychic medium” when the opportunity presents itself.

This leads Stanton to success above and beyond his lowly roots. As Stanton becomes renowned in society, his grift and his past start to catch up with him, so we see the extremes to which he will go to maintain his success and status.

In prior reviews, I have mentioned that as much as I admire del Toro as an intelligent, analytical filmmaker, I rarely actually enjoy his movies. That trend continued with Alley, an exceedingly well-crafted film that left me mostly cold.

Alley comes from a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, and the property received a screen adaptation in 1947 that starred Tyrone Power in Cooper’s role. I never saw that one, so the del Toro version became my first encounter with the tale.

I find myself curious to view the 1947 flick simply to see if it offers a more dynamic presentation than del Toro’s lackluster product. Not that I fail to find positives, as this Alley comes with more than a few.

For one, Alley boasts an excellent cast. In addition to Cooper, we find talents such as Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Ron Perlman, Rooney Mara, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen, and David Straithairn.

That’s an “A+” group of actors, and all provide more than competent work. That said, Cooper seems too old for the part, as Stanton comes across as a character who should be much younger than Cooper’s then-45 years.

For comparison, Power was 32 when he played the character. Nonetheless, Cooper does fine in the role overall, so despite this minor distraction, he holds up his end of the bargain.

A meticulous craftsman, del Toro also turns Alley into a consistently appealing cinematic product. Del Toro goes a long way to emulate the film noir styles of the 1940s, and this leads to a well-composed and designed update on the genre’s visual styles.

However, as I implied earlier, del Toro can tend to seem like he thinks, thinks, and thinks some more about every little nugget and detail involved with his movies. I feel this leads his flicks to come across as so concerned with minutiae that del Toro loses focus of the bigger picture.

Del Toro gives every aspect of his movies meaning, and in theory, it should become fascinating to work through all these components. However, because del Toro’s movies seem so chilly and emotionally distant, I find it difficult to want to investigate their deeper concepts.

This holds true for the slow and stiff Alley. At 150 minutes – or 160 minutes via this set’s “Extended Director’s Cut” - del Toro’s version runs nearly 40 to 50 minutes longer than the 1947 flick, and del Toro fails to use that space especially well.

Again, del Toro gets caught up in the details to such a degree that the movie’s narrative dawdles and lacks real thrust. Alley digs into the carny life with more specificity than the story needs, and this continues when Stanton goes up in the world, as the movie indulges in overly long “Morris the Explainer” scenes that it doesn’t need.

Somewhere buried beneath all these extraneous elements, Alley presents a potentially compelling tale of an ambitious grifter. It comes with plenty of shifty characters and shady deeds.

So why does the end result just leave me largely bored? Maybe someday del Toro will make a movie that shows his heart as well as his head, but Alley never threatens to become that film.

Nightmare Alley appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Guillermo del Toro’s movies tend to look great, and Alley followed that pattern.

Overall, sharpness seemed very good. Virtually no softness materialized, so the film appeared accurate and concise.

Jagged edges and moiré effects didn’t mar the presentation, and I saw no edge haloes. Print flaws also failed to appear.

In terms of palette, Alley went with a fairly teal orientation. A lot of amber/orange appeared as well, and we found splashes of other hues on occasion. Within stylistic choices, the hues seemed well-depicted.

Blacks were dark and dense, and low-light shots gave us good clarity. I felt pleased with this solid transfer.

Similar thoughts greeted the fairly good Dolby Atmos soundtrack of Alley, as the soundfield mostly delivered a mix heavy on atmosphere. Downconverted to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, environmental noises cropped up in the various speakers, and occasional action moments added to the track.

Those elements created a nice sense of place and added impact to the material. That said, this was a largely character-based tale, so the track didn’t come with a ton to impress the listener, although del Toro created a fine feel for the carnival setting and other domains.

Audio quality satisfied. Speech sounded crisp and distinctive, and music appeared robust and full.

Effects were accurate and dynamic, while low-end response showed good warmth and richness. Nothing here dazzled, but the audio merited a “B+”.

How did the 2025 Criterion Blu-ray compare to the original BD from 2022? Both offered very similar – if not identical picture, which seemed fine with me since the 2022 disc looked great.

However, the Criterion presentation offered Dolby Atmos instead of the 2022 set’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. I thought this gave the audio a bit more expansiveness but thought the 5.1 remained pretty strong on its own.

At least when I considered the movie’s theatrical cut (2:30:19), which became the subject of the picture/sound discussion above. The package also includes an Extended Director’s Cut (2:40:09).

In addition to editorial variations I’ll discuss later, the EDC offered two noteworthy presentation differences. First of all, it gave us a black and white image versus the color of the theatrical release and prior Blu-ray.

Both excelled in terms of picture quality. While they looked wholly different, the two seemed equally terrific.

In addition, the EDC offered DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack instead of the theatrical’s Atmos. As noted, I thought the EDC’s Atmos added a little involvement but the 5.1 worked fine as well.

What did the extra nine minutes, 50 seconds of the EDC include? As far as I can tell, we mostly get modest character extensions.

I say “as far as I can tell” simply because I don’t know Alley well enough to clearly recognize the alterations and I couldn’t locate an online list of the changes.

Did one version work better than the other? In terms of dramatic impact, I’d say that the longer cut didn’t seem any more effective than its slightly shorter sibling.

On the other hand, the black and white visuals seemed more appropriate for the story at hand, though perhaps I feel that way due to the tedium of the garish teal and orange palette. That seemed so uncreative that it became a drag on the theatrical version.

Though shot in color, the black and white edition seemed organic and never felt simply like a film stripped down to monochrome. While I still didn’t like the movie much, the black and white image turned into the more effective of the two.

On the EDC disc, we get an audio commentary from writer/director Guillermo del Toro. He provides a running, screen-specific look at the source and its adaptation, story/characters, themes and symbolism, cast and performances, sets and locations, costume and production design, music and audio, cinematography and lighting, editing and changes for the EDC, period details and a few connected domains.

Has del Toro ever recorded a commentary that was anything less than terrific? Off of the top of my head, I recall no clunkers or even mediocre chats from him.

Always thorough, methodical and insightful, del Toro digs into the film with gusto and honesty. He makes this yet another stellar commentary.

Also on the EDC platter, Versions of Nightmare Alley goes for three minutes, 23 seconds and involves del Toro and co-writer Kim Morgan. Well, Morgan sits next to del Toro but only he speaks.

Del Toro offers his thoughts about the black and white version as well as editorial differences. He gives us a few technical insights but doesn’t get into the story variations so the reel doesn’t give us a lot of value.

In addition to three trailers, we also find A Geek’s Tale. The 13-minute, six-second program brings back del Toro and Morgan.

They dig into the source novel and its adaptation. Morgan actually gets to chime in here and we find a tight overview of the challenges related to the screenplay.

On the Theatrical disc, Noir Anew provides a documentary. It spans 42 minutes, 37 seconds and offers del Toro, Morgan, producer J. Miles Dale, costume designer Luis Sequiera, production designer Tamara Deverell, SFX coordinator Geoff Hill, stunt coordinator Jamie Jones, director of photography Dan Laustsen, composer Nathan Johnson, and actors Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, David Straithairn, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, and Holt McCallany.

Via “Anew”, we hear about the source and its adaptation, genre influences, story and characters, cast and performances, the impact of COVID on the production, costumes, sets and locations, effects, stunts, cinematography and music.

Thanks to the comprehensive nature of del Toro’s commentary, we get a fair amount of redundant info here, though the alternate perspectives add value. Still, between the repeated notes and a bit too much happy talk, “Anew” becomes a spotty program if you already listened to del Toro’s chat.

Bradley Cooper and Guillermo del Toro delivers a 21-minute, 30-second conversation between the two in which they discuss Cooper’s character and aspects of their work together on the film. I like the chance to see the two interact and they add some useful insights, especially since Cooper barely appears in “Anew”.

The package concludes with a booklet that includes credits, art, a brief note from del Toro about the EDC and an essay from crime fiction/true crime expert Sarah Sarah Weinman. It finishes the set well.

Note that the Criterion set loses three promotional featurettes. These would be nice to have for completist purposes but they tended to seem fluffy so their absence creates no great loss.

Four years after he earned Oscar gold, Guillermo del Toro returned with Nightmare Alley, another in a long series of movies with too much head and not enough heart. Though a well-crafted neo noir, Alley simply never becomes an engaging thriller. The Blu-ray boasts excellent visuals and very good audio along with an appealing package of supplements as well as two separate cuts of the film. I always want to enjoy del Toro’s movies, but Alley doesn’t do the trick.

Note that this Blu-ray only comes paired with the movie’s 4K UHD version. Criterion chose not to release a solo Blu-ray for Nightmare Alley.

This means Blu-ray fans without 4K UHD players will need to buy this package to get the movie’s BD.