On Gone Girl

David Fincher’s feature film CV is impressive and diverse and would be the envy of many filmmakers. From contributing to a major sci-fi collection with Alien 3 (1992) through to Seven (1995) and Fight Club (1999) which will both, in time, be classics of their respective genres and of American cinema in general. Zodiac (2007) was a lesson in creepiness, The Social Network (2010) in biography and the icily cold The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) in remakes and adaptations. To further show off Fincher oversaw House of Cards (2013 -), a TV show that broke the forth wall and was the better for it. That shouldn’t work, but Fincher did it.

All directors have blips on their CVs and maybe some would say that Fincher’s was Panic Room (2002) or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), which was cold when it should have been heart warming. But both of these films displayed excellent technical achievements. Time may well show that Gone Girl, Fincher’s adaptation of the hugely popular novel in his blip and hopefully one he quickly recovers from.

A quality of all of Fincher’s films to date has been his ability to fit complicated characters into realistic environments. In Gone Girl Fincher presents cartoonish, exaggerated characters that have no place in his films. The environment is an unimpressive representation of suburbia that feels straight out of Desperate Housewives (2004 – 2012), which at least knew it was camp and hammy. Gone Girl takes itself seriously, yet belongs on Channel 5. The casting doesn’t fit (why they have Neil Patrick Harris playing a straight version of the same comedic role he plays in How I Met Your Mother (2005 – 2014) is baffling), but simply the characters are all unpleasant. There is no one to root for, no one to enjoy and the narrative is twisting and turning all the time, but failing to do the simple things right.

The best examples of twists are those that are there the whole way through the film, yet cleverly distracted us so the reveal is both surprising and intelligible. The Usual Suspects (1995), Shutter Island (2010) and Fincher's own Fight Club (1999) do this very well. Bad twists, of which Gone Girl is a perfect example, are those that do something so ridiculous and then turn to the audience and say, 'I bet you didn't see that coming.' This isn't smart nor is it appealing. That Gone Girl contains such as twist is one thing, that the message is that marriage is a tale of two sides is patronising. 

It is incomprehensibly poor and like Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor (2013), disappointing because of the talent involved. Like its characters Gone Girl is masquerading as something it isn’t, a piece of quality filmmaking.