‘Gone Girl’

By John Lyons

RECENTLY I was reading an interview with David Fincher on ‘Little White Lies’ website.

He was promoting his newest film, ‘Gone Girl’. In the comments section, one comment simply read: “The wait for Gone Girl is getting excruciating.” Absolutely.

Fincher is one of the finest filmmakers on the planet. I couldn’t wait to see what the man behind ‘Fight Club’ and ‘The Social Network’ was going to bring to the table in his adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestselling novel ‘Gone Girl’.

But that’s not the only reason why I’ve been counting down the days till October 3. ‘Gone Girl’ isn’t just one of 2014’s most highly anticipated films, it symbolises the start of ‘Oscar Season’.

In the months to come we’ll have films like ‘Interstellar’, ‘Birdman’, ‘Foxcatcher’, ‘American Sniper’, and ‘Inherent Vice’ gracing our cinema screens. And the road to the Oscars starts this weekend with David Fincher’s ‘Gone Girl’.

I promised myself that despite my excitement, I’d avoid watching any trailers or commercials for ‘Gone Girl’. Instead, I read the book.

Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike star as married couple Nick and Amy Dunne. Both characters are former writers who’ve moved back to Nick’s hometown in Missouri. Nick owns a bar downtown with his twin-sister Margo and teaches a writing class at the local community college.

Amy is something of a celebrity. Her parents popular series of children’s books, titled ‘Amazing Amy’, tells the story of a fictionalised version of Amy who’s perfect in seemingly every way.

On the morning of Nick and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary, Nick arrives home to find signs of a burglary, and Amy is nowhere to be found.

Police conduct a statewide search for Amy, but there’s just no trace of her. All the forensic evidence, Amy’s journal entries, and Nick’s lack of an alibi point to him as the key suspect. Which leaves us asking the question: ‘Did Nick Dunne kill his wife?’

Having read the book, I was curious to see how the narrative would be structured on film. In the book, an equal amount of time is spent on Nick’s journey as well as on the chapters consisting entirely of Amy’s old journal entries.

For the first half hour or so of the film, I was beginning to worry that something had been lost in translation in the adaptation process. The first act of  ‘Gone Girl’ is a real slow burn. But once the notorious twist was revealed (the first of many), everyone in the audience was absolutely glued to the screen.

What starts off as a relatively straight forward procedural murder-mystery film eventually delves into familiar Fincher territory – a twisted, spine-chilling journey into the heart of depravity.

The actors are nothing short of spellbinding, the mood is unnerving in the best way possible, and the way the story unfolds simply demands you to keep watching. Even though ‘Gone Girl’ is two hours and 20 minutes long, I don’t think a single person budged from their seat at any point during the film.

Author Gillian Flynn did an absolutely sublime job of adapting her book into the screenplay for ‘Gone Girl’. There were more gasps from the entire audience than I could count, many nervous laughs, and many, many instances of people cringing in horror at what was happening in front of them.

It’s one of the most unsettling films that I’ve seen in a long, long time. And that’s what makes it so damn good.

Fincher achieves all of this while still making a very on-the-nose social commentary about how the media easily manages manipulate the public’s perception of current events.

In short, ‘Gone Girl’ is not to be missed. It’s an adrenaline fuelled ride with so many shocking twists and turns along the way.

See it in the cinema while you can.

In Fincher we trust.

9/10

Follow John Lyons on Twitter: @Fireinthelyons