Gone Girl (2014)

Gone Girl: not David Fincher's worst film but his blandest, despite working perfectly on paper. Fincher's directorial style - calculated, efficient, precise - has meant his best films tend to be based around the analytical side of detectives and police work. He has a knack for making the uninteresting interesting. The mystery of Gone Girl might be in the title, but it's hardly a mystery film at all, and not as cold and inhuman as Fincher wants it to be.

A man walks into a bar. He chats awhile with his sister who works there. He says it's his anniversary but he doesn't look in the mood to celebrate. The phone rings, it's his wife; he heads on home. When he gets there he finds no wife and a broken table (despite no sign of a break in). The police are slow on providing answers; the media are a lot faster. 

Gone Girl is based on the bestseller by Gillian Flynn (who also adapted it into a screenplay). I can't comment on the adaptation having not read the book, although Flynn's work here is good; yet Fincher never accepts the more human side of the story. A savage killing is edited so that after every jab the screen fades to black and a dramatic sound effect repeats - it feels more like a trailer than an actual scene from the movie, especially one so savage. A woman experiences true freedom for the first time in years, possibly ever - she's speeding down the motorway and chugging on coke and not giving a shit. We only see this for a few seconds though. She's feeling alive but we're still trapped in Fincher's precisely boxed frame. His direction feels perfect for the earlier parts of the movie, where the viewer is as curious and confused as the characters. For the rest of the film, Fincher feels limp. 

Like any good mystery story, Gone Girl isn't really about that mystery at all. Flynn's story is about the media and how people's reactions to a topic become part of the topic itself. Ben Affleck is perfect casting as a man who has a bipolar reception from the public. There is a lot to like about the movie - the ending will get a chuckle from those with darker tastes - if only Fincher had saw the potential in the material, or someone more accustomed to this sort of material entirely.