Despite delivering consistently exciting performances, Jake Gyllenhaal has clearly struggled at the box office for the majority of his career. His latest release, In the Grey, happens to be one of his biggest underperformers. Directed by Guy Ritchie and also featuring Henry Cavill and Eiza González, the action-thriller grossed just $17 million worldwide against a reported budget of $70 million. Gyllenhaal’s previous movie with Ritchie, the acclaimed war drama The Covenant, grossed $22 million against a reported budget of $50 million. The year before that, he starred in Michael Bay’s Ambulance, which fell short of box-office expectations as well, grossing just over $50 million worldwide against a reported budget of $40 million. However, one critically acclaimed masterpiece in Gyllenhaal’s filmography managed to break out.
The movie was released theatrically in 2014, during a particularly solid run for Gyllenhaal that also included the cop drama End of Watch and the psychological thriller Prisoners. The 2014 movie grossed $50 million worldwide against a reported budget of $8.5 million, and has since emerged as a modern cult classic. The movie received widespread acclaim and earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination at the Oscars. But Gyllenhaal was snubbed despite receiving nominations at the Actor Awards, the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, and the Critics’ Choice Awards.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
The Movie Received Widespread Acclaim
We’re talking, of course, about Nightcrawler. The neo-noir thriller features Gyllenhaal as a lone wolf with a knack for capturing dramatic crime footage in Los Angeles. But when his work begins to get noticed, he begins making questionable ethical decisions to further his career. Directed by Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler holds a “Certified Fresh” 95% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Restless, visually sleek, and powered by a lithe star performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler offers dark, thought-provoking thrills.” The movie was added to Netflix this month, which also released Gilroy and Gyllenhaal’s follow-up together, Velvet Buzzsaw. Gilroy also worked with his brother Tony Gilroy on the acclaimed Star Wars series Andor.
Nightcrawler is now streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date
October 23, 2014
Runtime
118 minutes
Director
Dan Gilroy
Writers
Dan Gilroy
Producers
David Lancaster, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Fox, Tony Gilroy, Michel Litvak
