If Fincher was looking to UNDO himself...he has succeeded.

Rating: 1/10 (14 December 2014)

I'm only writing this review because I noticed this appears in the top 3 of IMDb's "Top Movies of 2014" at the time of writing. This in itself was enough to make me p*ss my trousers, but I then went on to read some of the reviews, after which I completely soiled myself.
I'm all for suspension of disbelief, especially when watching Hollywood fare, but how is anyone buying this bullsh*t - and people are making comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock!?
It's as if the second half of the movie forgets the first half had happened. Let's look at what unfolds:
Psycho woman fakes own murder and plants enough clues around to implicate her husband. All the clues are so contrived that, for a short while, even the detective suspects all is not what it seems.
Meanwhile psycho wife has skipped out of town and disguised herself by dying her hair slightly less blonde and smacking herself in the cheek with a hammer, presumably to look like some trailer trash victim of domestic abuse and consequently giving her an excuse to wear Jackie Onasis sunglasses. All of this is keenly noted by the perceptive woman she moves next door to, yet despite watching her story on the news every day, her actual identity completely illudes the observant neighbour.
Despite psycho woman's meticulous planning and care, everything unravels when she accidentally drops a money belt (how does this happen?) with all of her cash in it, whilst, wait for it, playing crazy golf thus tempting said woman next door to rob her, which she does with the aid of her hick boyfriend. Calculating psycho woman sits by and does nothing at this stage. Instead choosing to call up an ex boyfriend and potentially throwing her entire plan to the wall. Luckily (phew!) her ex boyfriend is so obsessed with her (no-one knows why at this stage, or even cares) that he puts her up in his lake house with security cameras everywhere for her safety. He is quite happy for an innocent man to be sentenced to death it appears, despite having a visit from the guy in which he implies that there may be more to his wife than meets the eye. He does have very expensive sheets though.
Meanwhile, despite their best efforts, animators fail to make the Ben Affleck model appear in any way emotional or human. Not even CGI has any effect, so they just give up an go home. By now, no-one in the audience cares and Ben is replaced with a peace of plasticine that was left over when Tony Heart created Morph. Nobody, not even the supporting actors, notice.
Just when you think things couldn't become more contrived, psycho wife ties a ribbon round her ankle and throws some wine down her top to emulate the fact that she has been raped (?), or had a miscarriage, or just, I don't know, "Was that her favourite top she threw wine over, because she looks very upset in front of the porch camera."
She then has what clearly appears to be (for the sake of the cameras), consensual sex with her ex, before cutting his throat with a box cutter and making a dramatic return to her husband, without so much as a call to the police. Falling into her play-doh spouses arms, she is then rushed to hospital, where she convinces local detectives and the FBI that she was abducted and held as a prisoner, by her ex, this whole time. Detectives and FBI suddenly suffer from complete amnesia and forget entirely about the murder set up. If she was abducted by her ex storming into the house and whacking her with a club, why does she have no injuries, is she some kind of self healing salamander. She'd only been gone for just over a week. Why did no'one notice this altercation, or the ex-boyfriend appearing in the middle of the day - after all, the neighbour noticed the door was open? Where did the several pints of blood come from on the kitchen floor? Why was the lounge area staged? Did the ex-boyfriend leave a slightly charred copy of her diary in her husband's father's oven? Even window-putty Nick has the sense to ask "Erm, how did she cut his throat if she was tied up all the time as she claims?" "To which the uninquisitive police response is, wait for it, "Can't you just be happy your wife is home?"
"Yes, of course, we should invite Bundy, Manson and the Wests around and celebrate"
It's good to know that all you need to do, to hoodwink the FBI is act like a damsel in distress, wrap some rope around your wrists too tightly, and re-enact a scene from Big Brother using a champagne bottle for them to forget any evidence that may implicate you in murder or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
I'm sorry but even as some sort of metaphor about domestic bliss or mass media, this film fails on so many levels.
Total sh*t.