Gone Girl (spoilers)

Politically, Gone Girl is a little curious. I was a little taken about how it was MRA Horror Stories the Movie – that is, the kind of thing Men’s Rights Activists love to highlight as the evil things women do and why men are the real victims of inequality. Which of course isn’t exactly a popular, mainstream view, and feminist groups online often get into mud-slinging matches with them. Where these men congregate, they very frequently disseminate (true) stories of women playing the system, usually with false rape claims. Well, there are false rape claims in this story, but the film is primarily about taking that and writing it larger – to a false murder claim.

Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike play the central couple here, Nick and Amy. They had a fairytale romance when they both managed to convince one another they were better than everyone around them, but after they lost their jobs and moved out of the Big City, things stagnated and they grew to resent one another. We don’t know it at the start, but Nick is cheating on Amy, and Amy has very severe issues from her childhood that lead to her hatching a plot to stage her own murder, then slip away, trying her best to get her husband wrongly convicted for her murder with various tip-offs and plotting to kill herself to seal the deal if it doesn’t get to that point without her needing to. The most satisfying part about this set-up is that the main characters are presented at first as though we’re supposed to like them, even though they’re intensely irritating. But that is all intentional – they’re not perfect, not even close, and nor was their relationship even at the start. On the other hand, what that means is that we end up with a film with no characters we like, except maybe Nick’s sis.

When things start to go wrong for her - incidentally just as it starts to look likely that Nick can win any case against him – she goes even further into psycho bitch territory, looking up an old lover who still holds a flame for her, making him think he’s the really creepy bastard, only for her to trump him, then go home, manipulate Nick with pregnancy, and win the day. The evil woman wins! The MRA were right! Call Wizardchan!

Fortunately, politics aside, and forgetting how the only thing I knew about this film going into it was that Ben Affleck’s penis made an appearance (the merest flash, less than you see of Neil Patrick Harris’...yay?), the fact is that it’s successful because it’s actually an enjoyable film. The twists keep the pace going and the various elements of cat and mouse are very compelling. Fincher’s trademark dark yet clinical style makes things uncomfortable in just the right way, and where the plot is very cartoonish, the matter-of-fact style carries it through.

In many ways, this is lazy execution, story-wise. There’s really no satisfying ending, and the way things progress feel a bit half-baked. The main central plot never seems like it would really stand up in court: cryptic final letter, diary that ends on such a convenient line and didn’t actually get burnt, the idea that Nick would try to burn the murder weapon in his house and just leave it there slightly scorched – it wasn’t a perfect plan. And then the fact that there’s no investigation into her killing her stalker guy despite getting hold of a box cutter because dem useless Feds took over the case (and are of course useless at investigating things). It all works out a little too conveniently, especially for the ending it goes for.

Perhaps there’ll be a sequel where the sister sorts everything out with a cleverer plan. But that would just be overkill, really. The film decided it didn’t want to tie up its loose ends for a creepier ending. Personally, it left me feeling a little hollow.