While the sheet music can be the most common way for the story to build and foreshadow, it's a brilliant piece of Quirke's transfixing and unique horror: why wouldn’t a series of notes make for a cursed piece of mythology, and then be passed along by endless hopefuls? On top of that, the movie depicts its Faustian deal without any figure verbalizing it. The images inside it are startling, with detailed, medieval graphics that foreshadow the steps Juliet can take to her destiny ('Purification, 'Sacrifice,' etc.), which are tactfully actualized by the script’s zig-zag plotting.
The source of this evil is creepy sheet music, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. She remains in the shadow of her twin sister Violet ( Madison Iseman), who is also at the same classical music boarding school, but has already been accepted to Juilliard. Whereas Miles Teller's jazz drummer in “Whiplash” goes through an emotional marathon practice by practice, Sydney Sweeney's classical pianist in “Nocturne” is presented with a Faustian way around hard work, a shortcut to her hopes of becoming legend. Like that last great movie about musicianship as a bloodsport, “Nocturne” is filled with the horror of failure and mediocrity, as experienced by someone who has invested their self-esteem in hitting the right notes.
