FrogRainInKitchen

Decades after what happened, he's sitting in his ugly dining room with his ugly table arrangements and is sipping some pretentiously expensive wine to his roasted human leg, trying to rewrite the story. He's munching on guy after guy after guy like "Actually, eating people is very sophisticated. I am sophisticated. This is civilized and artsy and my choice. Me eating people makes *them* animals, not me. I am a human with dignity. I am a human with dignity. I am a human with dignity. Look at me sipping this two thousand dollar wine"

If he realized that Alex was to be his 'Jack' on that train and if he assessed the situation REALLY quickly, I think it might've been that he wanted to isolate Alex and destabilize him at the same time? Like, "Oh, it's you. You're the one I'm gonna start a cult with. Perfect. I'm just gonna get rid of your main support pillar real quick to fuck up your psyche a bit and also to create a vacancy I can fill"

Yes, Nigel was weird from the start. He had creepy books and the edgy kind of stuffed animals, he did vivisections in his dorm room, overall he was living the silly life. But he mostly kept to himself at first. He did study Alex, but he studied other students too. He's just weird like that. Potentially, he might've watched Alex a little more closely since they were sharing a room and Alex' father was in the order. But he didn't seem to develop any actual interest in Alex until the train-kidnapping. In my opinion, that was the point at which he realized Alex was the Jack he'd been looking for - and only then did he start to actively persue Alex.

Meanwhile, Alex was staring that boy down from day one. The MOMENT he saw him in the dining hall he was like "shit. Fuck. Bugger or whatever British people say. I need to go look at his personal belongings right now"

And then the stares. Alex. Alex can you stop. If someone is being this strange, you avoid them, Alex. You don't 👁👁 them day and night. Alex was having an entire internal monologue about twinning and Nigel being linked to him somehow and able to read his mind, meanwhile Nigel was probably thinking about the gastric anatomy of rats or something.

Then Alex found out Nigel had been writing about him in his little diary. What's the next move? Kidnap him and almost throw him out of a train, of course. It's not like that will actually draw in Nigel's attention and doom you forever, Alex.

"He wasn't my friend."

From the Pietà parallels at the start of the movie (where Nigel is lying in Alex' arms) to the ethereal lighting that Nigel is depicted in especially towards the end of the movie, Alex' memory of Nigel seems to be infused with religious idealistic imagery. Meanwhile, Alex talks about him like he was a demon or the devil himself messing with his head and tempting him to sin - a dark force that he was powerless against.

I do believe Alex meant it when he said he felt like his thoughts were no longer his own. Of course, there's always the possibility that he was just lying to Sally in order to sell a narrative. But, psychologically, it fits.

No matter how hard he resents his father, how much he rejects the ideas forced upon him, he can't just erase his religious upbringing. The core ideas are still there, ingrained in his subconscious. So, if we're assuming that Alex caught feelings for Nigel (because duh), it would make sense for him to feel an insane amount of guilt and disgust at them. Look at his dad. That's the most homophobic man I've ever seen. Alex was surely taught early on that any kind of sexual desire is sinful and men being attracted to other men is even worse.

And, because it would feel easier to assume the desire comes from an outside force rather than from within, Alex did the Sir Chloe and projected his own feelings onto Nigel. Assumed he was some sort of mind-controlling monster that came to tempt him. "I felt that my thoughts were no longer my own" is literally the definition of externalization.

But, through the course of Alex' story, there's a visible shift.

At the start, Nigel is often shown in dim, cool lighting. Towards the end, that lighting becomes warmer and brighter. For most of the movie, Nigel wears black. At Nigel's house and later in the scene where he dies + the Pietà scene in the beginning, he's wearing white.

The way the Pietà scene is framed is especially deliberate. It's foreshadowing the way that Alex actually views Nigel while pretending to be the victim. It's literally the first of Alex's memories about Nigel that we see, and in it, he remembers him as something akin to Jesus.

It's clear that Alex' view of Nigel slowly changes from seeing him as a force of evil to seeing him as a prophet or even a god. It should be said here that those two views can coexist and Alex switches back and forth between them subconsciously throughout the movie.

But, no matter which way he sees Nigel, it's always heavily influenced by Catholic ideology.

When Alex is hit by the Big Gay for the first time and blames Nigel for it, he can't help associating Nigel with something demonic. When he starts to be intruiged by Nigel's ideas and eventually believes in them fully, he can't help associating Nigel with Jesus. Because that kind of thinking and imagery is familiar to him, wether he likes it or not.

Alex never managed to rid himself of Catholic beliefs, he simply projected them onto something else.