Box office
In North America, Nightcrawler earned $500,000 from early screenings, and after opening to 2,766 theaters, grossed $3.2 million on its first day of release.[48][61] It finished its opening weekend with $10.9 million;[62] journalists attributed the low sales to Halloween festivities.[61][62] In its second weekend, Nightcrawler dropped forty-nine percent in sales, and grossed $5.4 million.[63] After grossing $28.8 million by December, Nightcrawler reentered North American theaters due to several nominations during the 2014 film awards season.[64] The film eventually finished with $32.4 million in North America.[42]
In the United Kingdom, Nightcrawler opened to £1 million ($1.33 million), and grossed an additional £545,221 ($725,563) in its second weekend.[65][66] The film would eventually earn $18 million in international territories, and when combined with its North American sales, earned $50.3 million.[42] Despite its low production budget, Ortenberg believes that Nightcrawler was able to succeed at the box office by word-of-mouth marketing. "College kids, cinephiles, mainstream moviegoers across the country as well as critics and bloggers started taking possession of Nightcrawler as their own and championed it. It became a cause for people to promote it and get it seen", says Ortenberg.[48]
Critical response
The website Rotten Tomatoes aggregated an approval rating of 95% for the film based on 279 reviews and an average rating of 8.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Restless, visually sleek, and powered by a lithe star performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler offers dark, thought-provoking thrills."[67] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on reviews from 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[68] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[69]
Reviewers call Gyllenhaal's character a "charming sociopath" and his performance "a bravura, career-changing tour-de-force".[70][71] Film critic Christy Lemire called Gyllenhaal's performance "supremely creepy" and praised the film's themes and messages.[72] Christopher Orr of The Atlantic compared Gyllenhaal to a young Robert De Niro and his performances in the films Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy, feeling Gyllenhaal's character harbored traits shared by De Niro's characters in the two films. Orr called Gyllenhaal "tremendous" in the role and stated that the actor was learning to "channel an eerie, inner charisma, offering it up in glimpses and glimmers rather than all at once". He also declared the role as Gyllenhaal's "best performance to date".[73] Ben Sachs of the Chicago Reader highlighted Gilroy's direction, and how he was able to command an "uncommon assurance" from the cast and crew, despite being a first time director.[74] Conversely, Richard Roeper felt that Gyllenhaal's performance was merely good, and that it did not enter "new dramatic territory". He also found that Russo's character eventually becomes a caricature.[75]
Keith Uhlich of The A.V. Club named Nightcrawler the eighth-best film of 2014.[76] Its screenplay was ranked the ninth best of the 2010s in WhatCulture: "This feverous script succeeds because it contains one of modern cinema's greatest character [sic], Lou Bloom- macabre, ruthless, brazenly tranquil yet simmering with a latent violence [...] Gilroy opts for one-word sentences which zip across the page like Bloom's Dodge Challenger tearing down the interstate for the next car crash or burn victim." The writer also argued that the trajectory of the main character "plays to our guilt over our voyeurism- we consume the footage which men like Bloom provide, we allow the likes of him to rise in society".[77]
Accolades
Nightcrawler was nominated for several awards, most of which went to Gyllenhaal's performance and Gilroy's screenplay. At the 87th Academy Awards, Gilroy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.[78] The film received an additional four nominations at the 68th British Academy Film Awards, three nominations at the 20th Critics' Choice Awards, one nomination at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards, and one nomination at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards, but did not win any of them.[79][80][81][82] It did, however, win Best Film at the 19th San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
