Marval Movie

David Fincher is a master filmmaker that knows engaging story and how to execute it. Gone Girl is a quintessential Fincher movie having many of his recurring themes and elements that will take you through a dark tunnel and by the end you will still be riding it.

The movie is about Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) that is about to celebrate his five year anniversary with his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike). He stops by his bar, named The Bar, to have a drink and board game with his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon). When Nick returns there are drops of blood, a smashed table and Amy is nowhere to be found.

Nick seems distressed that his wife is missing but they have been growing apart in the last few years. We see from flashbacks that Amy was "complicated" saying things but meaning others as well as having a passion for clues and the cryptic. Affleck is very complelling as the average guy, but with a rage that lies deep within. The real incredible performance comes from Pike, as the picture perfect wife that is clearly smart and self-selfreliant but inside keeps a complex rubik's cube of a morality and thought process.

Gone Girl has similar themes to Stanley Kubrick's Eye's Wide Shut. What does it mean to be married? Who is this person that I have decided to spend the rest of my life with?

Fincher has called himself a "student of Hitchcock" and indeed there are Hitchcock elements in this movie. There is a blonde, blame, a dark tone, the theme of murder and like Psycho a twist accrues halfway through the movie that changes everything.

Fincher is also a great recogniser of talent, so I would have been rather surprised when I heard that Ben Affleck, Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry were starring in this movie but I trust Fincher to make the right choice when it comes to actors. And indeed these actors do give great performances, I never would have expected Neil Patrick Harris to play a convincing Norman Bates like character, yet he is. I wouldn't have been the one to cast Tyler Perry as a charismatic, hot shot lawyer, yet he seems so at home in the part.

Same with the story, this is not a recycled, formula plot this story takes an already unusual situation and twists and turns it until you are in completely new territory. You will have no idea where the plot will go next or what the characters will do, but its ok because you know that you are in the hands of a master.

Gone Girl is a dark, meticulously thought-out and executed look into the void of relationships and the bonds that poeple have with each other and what lies beneath the quaint little surface of a simple man and a hard working wife.

Rating: 4 stars out of 4