Molly (Rooney Mara) and Stanton (Bradley Cooper) share compelling moments in Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley.” (photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

Guillermo del Toro honors film history with heaping scoops of mon­ster movie delights, adding ingredi­ents to dishes originally served by the likes of Ray Harryhausen decades ago. Then a film like “Nightmare Alley” sneaks by during the winter holiday season, proving this top-tier auteur knows not limits.

Most moviegoers skipped this remarkable gem, now available on HBO Max and Hulu, but this one mega director noticed. And he and I are of the same mind, regardless of his ire for my beloved superhero flicks.

When Martin Scorsese learned that folks fancied other films over “Nightmare Alley,” he took to the Los Angeles Times’ commentary sec­tion to advocate for the film. It makes sense. He adores movie history, espe­cially film noir, and del Toro’s latest feature shirks the man’s usual affinity for fantastic monstrosity in service of a story brimming with gloom and dire outcomes.

Stanton (Bradley Cooper) might present himself as a medium able to see the great beyond, but he’s little more than a carnival entertainer, a mentalist who lies to everyone. He learns his craft at a circus run by Bruno (del Toro’s muse, Ron Perlman).

Once his show takes off, so does he, along with Molly (Rooney Mara), to bigger venues and more temptation to pervert the craft. If he’s that good, perhaps he can con folks with deep pockets by tapping into their deepest traumas. Former colleagues like Zeena (Toni Collette) warn him not to succumb to these “spook shows,” but conniving accomplice Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) has more sway with him.

It’s all the benchmarks of film noir. As Scorsese notes, Stanton and those around him “are all haunted, many are doomed, and the film is based on a novel with the kind of wild labyrinthine plot that is a hallmark of film noir.”

For any fans of del Toro’s brilliant body of work, ranging from “Hellboy” and “Pacific Rim” to “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Shape of Water,” sci-fi anomalies and super­natural thrills pop off the resume. In “Nightmare,” the only monstrosity resides in the hearts of unsavory char­acters. That’s Scorsese’s primary cur­rency.

Performances by Cate Blanchett, as Dr. Ritter, and Bradley Cooper, as Stanton, make “Nightmare Alley” a must-see example of film noir. (photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

Del Toro might fancy violence, eerie visuals and monsters, but his stories rarely sit tidily in one genre, especially his dramatic features. Take “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which dances around Spanish Civil War history, adding in notes of fantasy and horror through a young girl’s encounters with a faun.

“Nightmare Alley” feels primed for such genre hybridity, but it embraces a singular aesthetic. The twist: there is none. It’s a pure mod­ern-day noir story. No neo-noir, not pastiche. The “Taxi Driver” director agrees. This one’s more than a con­temporary spin on a genre long passed. For him, it’s “truer to the ani­mating spirit of film noir than the many ‘homages’ that have been made over the years.”

Like other modern noir tales, del Toro re-presents the past in service “to his own time,” Scorsese writes, “but he’s doing so in the idiom of a time gone by, and the urgency and despair of then overlaps with the urgency and despair of now in a way that’s quite disturbing. It’s like a warning bell.”

I can’t say it better than him. And at least the Academy noticed with four noms, including Best Picture. But the Oscar ceremony’s decreasing num­bers doesn’t exactly help.

The bigger issue at hand is the changing film landscape. Where does that leave other films like this? I don’t know. At the very least, I can hope that folks check out this incredible film on a couple streaming platforms, engage in a complicated story beauti­fully told.

Again, Martin Scorsese has the words: “a filmmaker like Guillermo, lovingly and passionately crafted, doesn’t just need our support: he deserves it.” Trust me, watch this film. It’s the kind of story that broad­ens the palate, invites debate, festers in the mind.