Gone Girl

Director: David Fincher

Year: 2014

“All we did was resent each other, try to control each other – cause each other pain,” Nick complains to his wife.

“That’s marriage,” Amy replies.

Gone Girl is a film that at the very least leaves you wondering what the hell you just watched and at best flattens you with the possible depths of depravity in humanity against the backdrop of the sanctity of marriage. Make no mistake: this is a great film with a dark soul. If people at the office go to see the film make sure you have a few extra jugs the next day because this is the water cooler film of the year.

“When I think of my wife,” Nick (Ben Affleck) begins.  “I always think of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains trying to get answers. What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?”

Quick, empty shots of the Missouri town at dawn are followed by our opening to the action, “The morning of the disappearance” as we are told by the text on screen. Nick is alone, by his garbage cans, looking for his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike). He responds by heading downtown to the bar he co-owns with his sister Margot (Carrie Coon), “The Bar”, with his sister.  It’s Nick and Amy’s fifth anniversary. Nick celebrates sardonically with a shot, wondering where his wife is – partially concerned, but partially relieved, too. She’s gone.

Then we get to hear Amy’s side of how it all started via voice over and her journal. It doesn’t take long to get sideways. Right from her initial meeting with Nick, when she offers a cheesy quiz of who she might be, we get she’s mysterious. My initial reaction to her screen presence was that she was overacting – a bit painful to watch. I’m not giving away too much to say she was putting me and Nick on from the jump.

Everything is sweet in her beginning. From an actual sugar storm to a sweet act of him going down on her and Amy declaring, “I really like you.” The cat is out of the bag, or home, quickly after that as we flash back to Nick’s perspective. A glass table is smashed and Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) is suspicious even as, or perhaps especially when, Nick asks “Should I be worried?”

Were the film to continue on this tack, which I thought it would, it would be a mildly interesting fall from grace about a not-so-bright guy (see: Scott Peterson) who tried to cash in on murdering his wife but acting like he didn’t do it. The usual media suspects are here and Fincher has a field day with them.  Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score is fascinating, fantastic and unnerving, just as it was in The Social Network. For the squeamish you should beware, too, as there's a riveting scene to rival Carrie's prom in terms of gore and intensity.

But that’s as far as I’ll take you for plot because the rest of this brilliant, incredibly missed film by the Academy for Directing, Best Picture and maybe most of all Best Adapted Screenplay, is too great a ride to give away. I dare you to see this film with your loved one. The conversations that follow should be very telling and let you know whether you should be keeping a diary or perhaps even a box cutter under your pillow.

Resonance Rating: 4.5 out of 5