

Having lost hope in her marriage and her career, a possible rekindling of relationship with Edward seems to excite her. This inevitably leads to divorce.Ĭoming back to present day, Susan is deeply moved by the book and she emails Edward to set up a meeting. But, Susan cheats on him with Hutton and even secretly gets an abortion when she becomes pregnant with Edward’s child. She tries to break the marriage off by telling him that she wants different things while Edward firmly believes that that’s not true and tries to repair the marriage.

Unfortunately, Susan starts feeling restless about Edward’s flimsy writing career and ends up being dismissive of his aspirations. Despite her mother’s disapproval of Edward (She thinks Edward is too weak and not right for Susan), they get married. Edward wants to be a writer and Susan, although unsure, wants to be an artist. They both admire each others’ aspirations. Having spent their high school years as friends, they connect instantly when they meet again in graduate school after years. Through flashbacks, we see her relationship with Edward and how that turns out. “I don’t really care about all this art” she says at one point. Moreover, Susan is unhappy about her career as well. Meanwhile, it is established that the relationship between Susan and her husband Hutton ( Armie Hammer) is strained and that he is being unfaithful to her. Suffering from insomnia, Susan delves into the book at nights and we follow the story in the novel along with her. It’s the manuscript of his book named ‘Nocturnal Animals’ which is apparently dedicated to her.
#Nocturnal meaning animals movie#
The movie begins with Susan receiving a package from her ex-husband Edward. Blinded and walking aimlessly in the desert, Tony falls, accidentally shoots himself and dies. During the violent encounter, Ray hits Tony in the head with an iron bar while Tony fatally shoots Ray. Tony finds Ray in the shack where Laura and India were found. Bobby and Tony goes looking for Ray independently. Bobby shoots and kills Lou while Ray successfully escapes. They abduct Ray and Lou and decide to extort a confession out of Ray during which they both try to get away.

As someone who is dying of terminal lung cancer, Bobby decides to go off the books and helps Tony to exact revenge by dealing with Ray by themselves. Steve got killed in an unrelated incident leaving Ray as the only culprit left to punish.ĭue to the circumstantial nature of the evidences, they are unable to charge Ray. After a year, Bobby manages to arrest Lou. Detective Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon) is assigned the case and they find Laura and India abandoned near a shack after being raped and cruelly murdered. After hitchhiking all night, Edward reaches the police in the morning. During the commotion, Ray (Aaron-Taylor Johnson) and Steve drives off with Laura and India while Lou forces Tony to drive the other car into the desert and leaves him there. During the night drive through somewhere isolated in West Texas, the family is being troubled by a gang of three men in a car, Ray Marcus, Lou and Steve Adams.

Tony Hastings (Jake Gyllenhaal), his wife Laura and daughter India are driving to Marfa, Texas. The novel begins with a family road trip. The story of the novel, which is the second plot, is unraveled when Susan reads it. The package is a manuscript of his novel. In the main story-line, we follow Susan ( Amy Adams), an art gallery owner, who receives a package from her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). The seemingly unrelated plots have lots of correlations between them. There are two different plots in the movie.
