In smalltown North Carthage, Mo., near the banks of the Mississippi River, a man with a history of failed relationships and a girl with a violent past are hiding dark secrets from each other.
I sat down to read “Gone Girl” expecting a Hitchcock-like thriller mixed with a dash of psychological horror. ?What I got was a steady stream of surprises.
It looked dark and strange, a touch supernatural. It finally convinced me to throw my hands in the air and just read it.
Instead of what I was expecting, a horror story a la Agatha Christie, mystery and tragedy all rolled into one, I got a snarky but deeply evocative study of modern marriage and modern psychoses.
Spoiler number one: the book is not what you expect.
The story is about a New York couple forced by family commitments to move to Missouri.
The husband, Nick Dunne, is forgetful but not dumb.
He could kill someone if he wanted to.
The wife, Amy Dunne, is sad but loyal.
Underneath her surface she hides dark secrets. Someone might want to kill her because of them.
It’s no surprise when Amy goes missing.
What happens next, while sometimes predictable and too often pandering, is at its core a troubling cautionary tale of perfectionism, domestic violence and revenge.
It does not seem like the place for ironic humor or cheerfulness, but that’s sometimes what you get. Whether or not it works is based on the reader’s preference.
For me, I’d rather it stayed a little more serious, especially given the gravity of some of the major plot twists, and the overarching themes of abuse and sexual violence.
The movie, however, looks like it might pull weight where the book slacked off.
David Fincher directed the new movie based on the book, titled the same and co-written by its author, Gillian Flynn. That could mean one of two things.
Either Flynn fleshed out her story or she made the same pitfalls as she did while writing the novel, trading character studies for stereotypes and driving the narrative on plot alone.
It’s a plot that’s good but not perfect. It needs rounded characters, and instead they’re just a little flat.
That’s the unfortunate thing about the book itself.
Its story, while disturbing, remains relatively unsurprising. Amy and Nick float just at surface level.
They’re one-dimensional in a story that moves in three dimensions. While they move the emotions of the reader, it is hard to latch onto and get invested in them. That’s not to mention the plot holes big enough to drive a train through.
The movie looks like it might just take it to the next level or fall incredibly flat.
Just as it’s a plot that needs full characters, it’s a book that needs a good movie. In the expert hands of David Fincher, who’s directed character-study pieces like “The Social Network” and psychologically driven films like “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the movie might just make it.
Moreover, whoever was in charge of casting needs an award. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as Nick and Amy Dunne might just be the greatest thing since Oreos and peanut butter.
The movie needs a goofy but good-looking guy and a sweet-faced blonde fairy in order to work, and that’s what they got.
In short, the actors needed to be beautiful but able to play some pretty twisted people, and the story needed a director that was able to push Flynn to dig into her story a little bit more and explore the inner workings of her characters’ minds and motivations.
I have high hopes for this film.
The book, while it may clunk here and stutter there, is essentially a rock-solid piece, and it ends on the perfect ping of a note.
Flynn may not be a terribly deep writer, but she knows how to work a reader and end a story.
If Fincher can capture that and push the story even further, I think I may have found my new favorite film.
It already looks like the intense, twisting murder mystery it’s supposed to be. Let’s hope it’s as good as it sounds. The movie opens Friday.
