The viewer is given just one glimpse of “Amazing” Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) before she vanishes from Gone Girl, the latest thriller from virtuoso filmmaker David Fincher. Husband Nick (Ben Affleck) arrives at the couple’s small-town Missouri home to find signs of a struggle, but no trace of his wife. Any sympathy for Nick quickly evaporates as the physical evidence and his own odd behavior draw a police detective (Kim Dickens) and a bloodthirsty press corps to his doorstep. Even Nick’s fraternal twin Margo (Carrie Coon) begins to express doubts.
It’s a story older than Othello, but given Fincher’s filmography (Se7en, Zodiac, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), it’s hardly shocking that not everything is as it seems. Adapted by Gillian Flynn from her own best-selling novel, Gone Girl is an impressive work of cinematic storytelling. Although Nick is the protagonist, the film is constructed to preserve the mystery of his guilt, an ambiguity that Affleck’s heated yet inscrutable performance only enhances. Much of the film intercuts between Nick’s tribulations and flashbacks culled from Amy’s still-missing journal, which recounts the tale of her marriage’s descent into negligence and terror. Pike is characteristically mesmerizing in her scenes, juggling enough emotional and tonal shifts for three actors.
Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth conjure a gorgeously menacing world for this twisted story, replete with slate-gray shadows and low angles. Editor Kit Baxter and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross establish an aura of lethal automated motion, like a clockwork trap gradually clicking shut. So narratively and aesthetically compelling is Gone Girl that one finds it easier to forgive its sins, such as an unnecessarily protracted epilogue and its flirtations with sexist stereotypes. It’s striking that such a pessimistic portrait of rotten relationships could be so enjoyable, but that’s the grim magic of Fincher’s sleight-of-hand.
Gone Girl opens Friday, October 3 in wide release.
