Director: David Fincher
Stars: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry, Neil Patrick Harris, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens
I keep getting confused between Gone Girl, Gone Baby Gone, and Gone. They should be put in a boxset. And Affleck should be edited into Gone. Anyway, Nick Dunne (Affleck) comes home to find that his wife, Amy (Pike) is missing. Through flashbacks we see that she was afraid of him, and we get the story of their marriage. The police are suspicious of Nick and soon begin an investigation as Amy’s case becomes one not of a missing person, but of a murder.
I enjoyed Gone Girl quite a bit…up to a point. It beings with a lot of tension, it’s very atmospheric and it feels like a slow-build thriller where pieces of truth are uncovered gradually. There were a few surprising twists that made me unsure of how to feel about Nick, and I loved that because I was fully engrossed. Then, at one point, the film cuts away and basically spoonfeeds the solution of the mystery with no grace or subtlety. That portion of the film felt so odd to me.It turned from a mystery film into something completely different and I don’t think the shift in tone was handled as well as it could have been.
The aspect I really enjoyed is that, with the way the media gets involved in these cases, it’s not so much of the truth of the matter as it is how the people are perceived. Much of the film is spent on people telling Nick how to act, and a lot of the controversy surrounds something as simple as a smile.
Overall I found it to be excellently paced, and there were some moments of sheer disgust. However, towards the end it became somewhat implausible and I’m not sure the ending rings true, it feels more like it was put in there to leave things on a certain note rather than what would actually happen. The performances were great, so too were all the technical aspects of the movie. I enjoyed it but I can imagine some people will feel let down by the ending.