Gone Girl

Gone Girl

This review contains SPOILERS David Fincher directs this mystery/thriller, adapted from the hit novel by Gillian Flynn. On the date of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home to find his house trashed and that his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) has gone missing.  Police officers Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and Jim Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) investigate Amy’s disappearance, while Nick helps to organize search parties to find his wife.  As the days go by, an increasing amount of evidence surfaces, including Amy’s diary, which suggests that Nick has something to do with his wife’s disappearance.  As the community turns against him, Nick and his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) seek the help of star defence attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry) to help clear Nick’s name. Gone Girl is a film that plays with themes involving public perception and how well one knows the person that they have chosen to spend the rest of their life with.  On the surface, Nick and Amy Dunne seem to be a perfect couple.  However, through narration in her diary, Amy describes becoming increasingly dissatisfied with her marriage with Nick and even becomes fearful of his ability to harm her.  In addition, there is something not right with the way Nick has been treating his wife’s disappearance, including smiling at inappropriate moments and generally seeming a little off. Since I was aware prior to seeing the film that there was a bit of twist in Gone Girl, I figured that it would probably involve the fact that Amy was responsible for her own disappearance. While this indeed turns out to be the case, the plot features enough swerves that I thought for a brief time that it was indeed possible that Nick was the culprit.  Nick is revealed to have more than a few skeletons in his closet and is not entirely an innocent party.  The film quickly becomes about Nick and Amy’s mind games and how they fight for public sympathy.  Having gone into hiding, Amy is hoping that Nick will take the fall for her disappearance, as punishment for his crimes against their marriage.  After figuring out the truth, Nick hopes to turn the tables and win back sympathy, denying Amy of the attention that she desires. High praise has to be given towards to performance of Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl, who portrays Amy in many different lights.  From the sympathetic victim to the conniving manipulator, Pike truly shines the most in the film.  While I can definitely say that I enjoyed Gone Girl as a whole, it is hard for me to gauge how much I liked it.  The film definitely peaks when the reveal about Amy is made, which I watched with great glee.  However, when the mystery is solved, the film becomes more about whether or not Amy will receive her comeuppance. The more that I think about it, I probably liked Gone Girl more in the first half when I had no idea where the plot was going to lead.  While I still enjoyed the film in the second half, I felt that it had not much more to give after the big revelation.  The film is undoubtedly ripe for analysis and interpretation, however I am going to stop short from saying that I loved this film.8 | LIKED IT