GONE GIRL, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike

gone girl

Gone Girl is a smart, suspenseful ride with frightening plot twists. I liked it all the way through to the last five minutes. And then I didn’t.

(This is better than the movie I watched recently that I liked all the way until I got into the car to go home and then didn’t like.)

Here’s the story: beautiful Amy (Ms. Pike) meets charming Nick (Mr. Affleck) in New York City. They fall in love, get married, and then move to Missouri to care for Nick’s mother as she battles cancer. After the mother’s death, the couple inherits her house where things go from love and trust to distrust and hate, culminating in Amy’s disappearance.

Amy’s parents are crazy authors who wrote a series of books about the daughter they wished they had (also named Amy) who gets all the toys and experiences real Amy never got. Try that on for emotional bullying.

Amy’s husband looks like a million bucks, but may not be the world’s most faithful guy, something that won’t go well for him once the police and FBI start to get picky about little things like evidence and “Do you love your wife?”

Throw in a couple of Amy’s old boyfriends, each of whom has plenty of motive to want her off the planet, Nick’s old father who appears to hate Amy, and his sister who certainly does, and there are plenty of suspicious folks around.

The acting is great. Ben Affleck–as a man who may have murdered his wife in cold blood–is thoughtful and convincing, bringing back bad memories of Scott Peterson. Rosamund Pike is beautiful and versatile as a wife whose marriage has not turned out as spectacularly triumphant as she imagined it would. Tyler Perry is great as Nick’s defense attorney.

As I mentioned above, I was on board with this movie until the very end. I love an unpredictable movie like this one that is full of plot twists and sudden gasps from the audience, but the thing is this: I want movies to end. Unless it is known there is going to be a sequel, the end should tie off the major dramatic questions and provide a sense of closure. If a movie is going to leave things hanging, there had better be a good reason.

For example, Inception ended with that awful spinning-spinning-maybe-falling-maybe-not top. It was important that we go away wondering whether Dom was still dreaming, and of course I choose to believe he was home at last with his children. You can believe what you want. Don’t start with me on this.

In Gone Girl, it’s different. There’s no happily-ever-after possibility. There’s only the possibility of looming dreaded disaster or family-crushing catastrophe, and the only question is how bad it’s going to get from here. There’s zero hope of normalcy, no hope for a yellow brick road or even a silver lining.

There are so many ways they could have ended this movie other than the way they did. So many ways that could have provided a glimmer of something resembling at least a chance of hope. They chose not to. I’m okay with it, and I think you should see this movie if you like a good suspenseful ride, I just wish they had sewn it up nicer.