Gone Girl Review

Warning: As much as I attempt to leave spoilers out of my reviews, this is one that has proven impossible. So if you don’t want to know this story’s big twist or some of the discrepancies between the film and the novel, please stop reading now. 

Grade: B+

One-Liner: Amy, there are much better uses for wine bottles. Trust me.

It is not unreasonable for Gillian Flynn’s husband to be concerned. The former journalist and bestselling author penned a disturbing tale of a manipulative marriage, complete with a cheating husband, murdering wife, and her entrapping pregnancy. But he should also be impressed, seeing as she was able to transition her own dark tale, which mostly relied on its two main character’s inner monologues, onto the big screen with minimal hiccups and plenty of suspense, even for those who already knew what happened. 

The highly-anticipated Gone Girl film adaptation proved to be an exercise in anxiety as the jarring score sliced into my nerves and caused me to grip onto the arms of my seat. It didn’t matter that I knew the story. Just like Amy’s deception, the film managed to convince me that the things I knew to be true were not necessarily as they appeared. 

Ben Affleck proved to be the film’s best casting choice, playing the flawed hero Nick Dunne. As he teetered on the line between drunken asshole and desperate prime murder suspect, the rumpled-looking A-Lister managed to still be likable while cheating on his (at the time) seemingly-innocent wife. He was even able to convince me that he was a good old Missouri-bred Southerner … and I’ve seen Good Will Hunting. 

Rosamund Pike made for a haunting Amy Elliott Dunne, though it was hard to delve into her psyche the way the book Amy manifested herself on paper. Some of the film’s omissions, like the tales of several of Amy’s past victims, could have helped build up her sociopathic character even more, but as it was, she was plenty disturbing. 

Director David Fincher opted to show the brutally gruesome scene in which Amy slits open Desi Collings’ throat in the middle of sex after she’s mutilated her own vagina with a wine bottle to make it look like she's been raped. It was a bold move on his part, shifting the tone of the film to give it a slasher-flick quality, and my eyes may never be the same. But overall, it was a good choice, considering so many inside details had to be left out as the below-surface Amy and Nick were forced into their three dimensional environment. 

The worst casting came in Neil Patrick Harris’ dark-yet-comically-sexual portrayal of Amy’s obsessive ex-boyfriend Desi Collings. Some of his lines, and especially his delivery, were cringe-worthy, taking me out of the spooky drama and into the feel of a particularly embarrassing episode of How I Met Your Mother. 

Some of the film’s exclusions did take away from the story, like Nick’s woman-hating father, who should have played more of a role in developing his conflicted personality. And the absence of Nick’s drunken, lovesick video confessional made Amy’s decision to return appear more abrupt and confusing. Amy’s genius lay in her attention to detail, so these holes were significant enough to note. 

Gone Girl certainly isn’t a film I would watch over and over again, mostly because my nerves couldn’t take it, but it managed to keep the novel’s magic, and even, if possible, delve to a deeper level of the twisted tale.