2014's Mystic River- prepare for suffocating tension

Rating: 7/10 (14 October 2014)

Gone Girl is 2014's Mystic River, a beautifully crafted, powerful, memorable story that leaves you thinking, and yet ranks painfully low on the "entertainment" scale. I'm hard pressed to find a real flaw in Mystic River, just as I am in Gone Girl. That doesn't mean the movie is perfect, I could parrot some of the points raised elsewhere, but in totality I think Gone Girl is a damn fine film.
And I can never recommend it.
This is an insanely dark movie for a major Hollywood production- if this was a smaller film without famous actors I think it would be one of those movies that IMDb members talk about when they're discussing "disturbing movies" like Caligula, Gummo, and Happiness. To bring it back to the Mystic River analogy I would like to turn the attention to Clint Eastwood's follow up Million Dollar Baby. This was another dark movie that I found very challenging, but unlike Mystic River there was enough lightness to it that it felt more balanced, that life wasn't just three hours of being kicked in the balls. I found those small rays of sunshine refreshing and helped add contrast, perspectives, and layers to the ending. Mystic River and Gone Girl never makes the attempt to add contrast in this way, they hammer away at the inescapable darkness of the narrative. Both movies are so packed with impending doom, and suffocating tension, that the viewer never has a moment to relax and enjoy the really well crafted film that is being shown.
I'm not trying to argue that there should have been more comedic moments, they would have been out of place; but even the most serious movies can take their foot off your throat long enough for you to breath.
I'll give the movie a 7 out of 10 and be glad to never watch it again.