Gone Girl starts off with in an unsettling fashion, even throwing the opening credits quicker than normal. This makes the audience a little uneasy as the story begins.
And the audience will remain uneasy and struggling to catch up for the remainder of the film.
Gone Girl is polarizing, intense, extremely jaded, and quite manipulating. David Fincher's fingerprints are all over the adaptation of the best-selling novel that alters the tone of the book to adjust better to the cinematic medium. From the direction to the spellbinding and haunting musical score, Gone Girl hits all the right notes, does an excellent job maintaining the tense mystery without becoming predictable, and leads an all-star cast (Even Tyler Perry was bearable) surrounded by talent in the art, cinematography, and production department.
What starts off as a simple tale of a quiet mysterious husband (Ben Affleck) worried about the disappearance of his wife (Rosamund Pike in a pure Give Me My Oscar performance) turns into a darkly stylish thriller with twists, turns, unexpected surprises, intrigue, and slick commentary on American marriage and the American media's mannerisms surrounding the news and the people involved in it. Similar to Social Network, it presents an interesting character and sociological portrayal while mixing in an exhilarating story to propel the movie forward.
And…then we go in a very different direction for the final act.
In a style similar to Hitchcock's also-polarizing Vertigo, Gone Girl consists of two parts: the mystery and the consequences of the mystery once the conclusion has been unveiled. This makes Gone Girl practically two different movies that might be equal in tone but splits into seemingly opposite roads. While the film is 150 minutes long, the climax of the original conflict actually arrives much much sooner than the norm—just like Vertigo. And just like Vertigo, it's slightly tough to appreciate the unveiling of the wild card when there is still so much poker left.
The best way to describe Gone Girl without revealing any of the surprises and revelations is this: Gone Girl's first two acts are like a dark roller coaster you've never ridden before; full of turns and inversions that you will enjoy and consistently anticipate and request more of. The final act of Gone Girl is like a good roller coaster you've ridden before; where you can appreciate the thrills, appreciate the details, but at the same time make you wish you could be surprised more.
And----like Vertigo----if the movie had played out the mystery and the conflict a bit longer then the payoff would have been much grander. The timing of the payoff is extremely important in movies like this, it can make a movie like Fight Club and The Usual Suspects, or it can totally shatter a movie like Lucky Number Slevin (Oh, you don't remember this one? Of course you don't…). Not to say Gone Girl loses too much momentum once the movie takes a jarring shift, but that second roller coaster ends quite abruptly, leaving you with a satisfied feeling with a side of emptiness.
But hey, there is a good chance that Fincher's intention was to never let you find your footing during the grim adventure. There is a good chance that Fincher had spent a good deal preparing a beautiful cinematic present without even considering topping it with a nice bow. Because at the end of the day, whatever timing and tonal shift issues the Gillian Flynn script presented, it was eradicated by the high value of the overall film. It is unique, it is breathtaking, and it will devour your thoughts long after the movie is over—if it wasn't any good, would I even spend so much time trying to figure out how to judge this flick?
Good movies are enjoyable, great movies linger in your consensus. Like the thickest of peanut butter gluing to the roof of your mouth, Gone Girl will meander in your thoughts as you continuously struggle to soak in all the grim, all the insanity, and all the sheer hurricane of subtle tension you had just witnessed.
If only it had less Vertigo….
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