Gone Girl Review

David Fincher is one of the few directors in Hollywood currently that can take any source material and can completely make it his own while staying faithful. Doing so, he's become the classic director everyone knows and loves him for. He's made many classics out of books that are considered ordinary yet interesting, such as Fight Club, The Social Network, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. When I heard he was attached to direct Gone Girl with a cast of Ben Affleck and Tyler Perry, I had many doubts since the plot sounded like a regular murder mystery novel and the cast hasn't done anything really noteworthy recently. But watching this film, I further realized that I was wrong. Fincher has done it again, and has made a suspense thriller for the ages.

The fact that the book's author Gillian Flynn wrote the script gave me plenty of hesitation as well. We have seen so many great authors write screenplays and the films end up terrible (an example is Cormac McCarthy's disappointing and dull script for The Counselor). But here, Flynn writes it naturally, adding dark and meta humor when necessary and putting the tension in perfect spots. What also surprises me about this script is how she has made so many unlikable characters so relatable that you want them to succeed at the end even if they don't deserve to.

As I mentioned earlier, I was not impressed with the cast announcements originally. Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry, and Neil Patrick Harris haven't done a film like this before and have also never played characters of this type. Yet they all do it so perfectly. Affleck nails it as the lead Nick Dunne, a man who you should hate based on certain facts but you feel pity for because of this disturbing situation. It's obvious he was casted because he can relate to how chaotic the media circus can be because of his famous relationship with Jennifer Lopez, because he feels so natural here. I'm looking forward to him more and more becoming Batman now. The real stunner is Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne, who gives it her all in every scene and absolutely deserves a Best Actress nomination, if not a win for this powerhouse performance. Tyler Perry is great comic relief as the lawyer Tanner Bolt, and Neil Patrick Harris creeped me out big time as Desi Collins. The rest of the cast do respectively well also.

Fincher creates this world with a beautifully dark and consistently uneasy tone. The dark color grading and beautiful cinematography really help this. Not to mention the stunning score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the score helps the audience feel with the characters and the unsettling tone naturally. What most surprised me about Gone Girl was how it ended. Fincher's last film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a brilliant suspense thriller that kept me on the edge, but the last 10-15 minutes felt thoroughly unnecessary and completely took away the tense, uneasy feeling that the former 2 and a half hours gave me. Gone Girl, on the other hand, wraps up every possible storyline it has but it has possibly the most disturbing ending I have ever seen in a mainstream film in a long time. Fincher plays the last 15 minutes here, thinking the audience will go home safe, but nails it by deciding it to end it by keeping the consistently uneasy tone that the rest of the film has. It's obvious he learned his lesson from Dragon Tattoo.

Gone Girl is a perfect modern thriller, a never-ending nightmare of a film. Disturbing, darkly funny, brilliant casted, and well-written, Fincher has outdone himself yet again. This is one of the few films this year that I went home thinking and worrying about the characters after the film. I still care. This film might end up being my favorite this year if nothing else surpasses it. See it even if you haven't read the book (I didn't read it).

Rating: 10 out of 10