There’s a new perfect movie for an audience who wants to be caught off guard. “Gone Girl,” released on Friday, started off as a light hearted romance with a dose of comedy. The movie was based on the novel of the same title by Gillian Flynn, published in 2012.
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike are portrayed as an average married couple on their fifth anniversary. This anniversary takes a sudden turn when Affleck’s character, Nick Dunn, came home to the house in a mess and his wife, Amy, no where to be found.
Immediately, Nick called the police to investigate and Amy’s parents to fly to the couple’s hometown of Missouri to call a press conference. It is then revealed that Amy is actually famous and her parents based a children’s book series off of her childhood called “Amazing Amy.” Nick then became pressured to act like a seemingly perfect husband in front of the cameras to avoid ridicule.
The suspense of the police investigation to find Amy is interrupted by Amy’s flashbacks to when she fell in love with her husband. One of these flashbacks was of the night they met at a party in New York City. Nick’s humor won over Amy’s “cool girl” attitude, which led to a budding romance. One of the scenes of this flashback had great significance to the story, as well as excellent cinematography: Nick and Amy strolled down a busy alley in New York City where sugar was being unloaded into a bakery. One of the bags of sugar breaks open, creating what Nick calls a “sugar storm” which the couple then runs through.
From this point on, the movie consisted of plot twists, one after another. First, Nick is blamed for his wife’s disappearance and later accused of her murder, without her body being found. The anniversary scavenger hunt Amy set up led the police to a diary Amy had written; this diary had been the source of the flashbacks shown.
The beginning of the diary was the happy moments of Nick and Amy’s early relationship, but as it progressed, the diary took a dark turn into revealing a scene of abuse by Nick followed by Amy’s fear for her life and her purchase of a gun.
If one was going to see this movie, they should not expect any sort of “feel good” moments. The beginning of the movie set the audience up for a typical lover is kidnapped and then happily reunited plot line. This idea is completely shattered by extreme and unexpected events.
The movie itself is very entertaining due to the suspense of truly not being able to pinpoint the next plot. The light humor, tragedy and malicious action leave the viewer with a sense of plot whiplash. A hardcore suspense fan would love this movie, however, the casual moviegoer may want to think twice about seeing “Gone Girl.”
Some of the malicious actions of Amy could be categorized as psychological horror. This movie completely ripped to shreds the idea of the common rough marriage and replaced it with the most extreme version of revenge imaginable.