by Chelsea Dee, Editor-at-Large
When people assume that books cannot properly adapt to the screen, or that the movie can never be as good as the book, I generally agree. I feel like Gone Girl is a great example of how to do it right, and that one of the reasons it does work is because the author is the scriptwriter. Gillian Flynn’s book haunted me in the best possible sense, I found it completely fascinating, and I was skeptical like other fans when they said the movie was being made. But she did the screenplay, and bravo to her, because it was exactly what I wanted. Gone Girl is a story of so much darkness and twists and turns. It’s a psychological thriller with a lot of pointed criticism of the media and the sensationalism of our culture. It’s not profound, and you don’t take a lesson away from it; it’s a disturbing story that’s fascinating to read, and now watch. I could get into the book here, but instead I’ll just focus on the movie for now.
There will be major spoilers in this review. You have been warned.
Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck – Chasing Amy) is an average man from Missouri who met a beautiful and mysterious woman Amy (Rosamund Pike – Wrath of the Titans). They had a charming first meeting followed by a passionate and challenging relationship. Things started to break down when they both lost their jobs, they were forced to return to his home town to take care of his dying mother, and then she helped fund his new project, a bar with his twin sister Margot (Carrie Coon – The Leftovers). Nick and Amy have become estranged, and he returns home on their fifth anniversary to find her missing. There’s suspicious signs of a struggle, and he calls the police. Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens – Lost) investigates and confirms she thinks his wife was taken, possibly killed. They decide to start a town-wide search for Amy and volunteers show up everywhere to help them.
Things start to seem a little suspicious however. Nick’s behavior baffles people, both from his flatness to his awkward smiles, although he states it’s because he responds to things automatically in a polite way. Then we find out he’s been having an affair with one of his students for over a year, and other clues start to add up. The major one being that the audience hears Amy’s voice as she narrates journal entries, starting with their happy meeting all the way to current time where she starts becoming afraid of him. He says he wanted to have kids but Amy didn’t want to, despite the fact her journal contradicts that. The public turns on Nick, believing he might be responsible for his beautiful wife’s disappearance, and he’s arrested. That’s when the first twist shows up: Amy’s alive and planned all of it.
Amy knew that Nick was having an affair, and she is a sociopath. She pretended all this time to be a certain way to attract her husband, but she lost him anyway, and he isolated her in his home town away from New York city and its excitement. She has problems stretching back to her parents writing famous books about her, except the her in the books far surpass her own abilities. Hateful of Nick now, she staged everything coldly so he would be framed for her murder, and fled. At first she plans to kill herself to complete the picture and take him with her by the death penalty. She takes on a new identity and watches everyone talk about her on the television, enjoying the attention. Nick figures out what she did, but there’s no way to actually prove any of it, and who would believe him now? He hires a flashy attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry – Madea) to help him. They plot to have the perfect interview where he admits all his faults and begs for them to bring Amy home, but it’s a coded message to Amy, letting her know he’s aware of the truth. It’s a taunt, and she finds herself intrigued by it.
After getting robbed, Amy turns to her stalker-obsessed ex Desi (Neil Patrick Harris – Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) who is wealthy and can take care of her. But she knows she’ll eventually get bored of him too, and starts to make a plan. She stages a kidnapping-rape scenario with Desi and murders him in “self-defense,” coming back to Nick and stating she was taken. He knows the truth, but he can’t find a way to get away from her now that the public opinion has changed again. His cohorts can’t help him either. Amy points out that the media loves her, and there’s nothing he can do without ruining his life. She then sweetens the pot by saying she’s pregnant. He hasn’t had sex with her, but he donated sperm before when they were testing fertility, and she implanted herself with it. He decides to stay with her for the sake of the baby, but maybe, just maybe, that isn’t the full truth.
I think the last part there is something that fascinates me. Margot says clearly as she’s crying at the end that he wants to stay with Amy. And I find that interesting. I think there is an aspect to Nick, that now at the end the two of them know exactly who the other is. They aren’t pretending any more, everything’s on the table, and there’s a freedom in that. I think it’s very possible that Nick loved her in a twisted way, this version of her, the psychotic side. And that’s why they’re “partners in crime,” as he says at the end. He’s keeping silent, mostly for the baby, but that isn’t the only reason. We saw that they both were bored and trapped in their life. Now they’ll never be bored again. In the book, for the first half it’s an unreliable narrator situation, with both Nick and Amy lying to the reader. He doesn’t mention his affair, and obviously her diary is a fabrication. The themes of this story are very pointed toward the media and public opinion. The media twist their story to make Nick guilty before any proof is actually found, and the public eats it up without question. In the end, Amy uses the public opinion to control Nick and protect herself. She could now get a book deal, she has the community’s adoration, and he can’t leave her (yet) or hurt her without everyone knowing about it. But all of the characters are very ambiguous. They’re all dark. It’s complicated, and I love that.
The tension is built well here. They make you very uncertain about Nick in the first third, so when Amy’s lies are revealed, it’s a genuine surprise to the audience. That is difficult to do, so bravo. The acting is superb. Rosamund Pike is getting the lion’s share of attention here, as she rightly deserves. She is absolutely brilliant in this role. It is a difficult part, because she pretends for the audience too, to be sexy and interesting in the beginning. And then nefarious and ruthless when her true colors show. You despise her, but wow is she interesting to watch. Bravo to her, because she’s an unknown in a lot of ways, and now she’s going to hit the spotlight. Affleck does great in the role too, going from very charming in the flashbacks, to tense and borderline violent by the end. Understandably. There was unfortunate implications in the movie, such as her faking rape and abuse when there isn’t any, and her general psychosis as a poor reflection of a woman. But it is a story, the writer is definitely not implying any other women are like this. Margot and the Detective nicely even her out with being decent, intelligent, moral people. It’s a movie that keeps you guessing until the very end. I heard people say they thought it could have been ended early, but I was still on board throughout the last scene. I’m still thinking about it now, and that’s the mark of a great film. I can’t wait to see the behind the scenes on the DVD. I expect this movie will come up again in the Oscars, and it should be. Well done by everyone.
Rating: 
ComicsOnline gives Gone Girl 5 out of 5 unreliable narrators.
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