Octopus and scrabble....

Rating: 9/10 (16 October 2014)

Nick Dunne blames the recession and the loss of his job for the decline of his marriage to his wife with a very attractive trust fund.
Questions of his motives and character are raised after his wife's disappearance on the morning of their fifth anniversary.
As the search for his missing wife plays out over the days, guilty suspicions are fuelled into a national frenzy by the media circus camped outside his house.....
Having never read the source material, I had no idea where this was going to go, but I heard on the grapevine that it was something special.
So I avoided any trailers or promotional material and went in without any real clue with what to expect. And my advice is, if you have done this, keep it that way and see it.
Fincher has made his finest movie since Zodiac, and the way he handles the narrative with the story is something very special.
Apart from Margot, all of the women in this movie are portrayed as opinionated, self obsessed people who want just one thing, their time in the spotlight.
And this goes the other end of the spectrum for the male characters too, with the exception of Tanner Bolt, they are all depicted as weak individuals, moulding themselves around the women that they are with the most, or have been affected by the most.
When the film hit the curveball at the beginning of the second act, it really did shock me, the amount of deception and effort that a certain character does in order to 'be free', but then the end of the second act is pretty predictable, and it almost fooled me into thinking the film was going down the Vertigo route, but the look on someone's face just gave the game away to me.
The cast are all excellent, but Pike here has made her career defining performance, she is brilliant, and if she doesn't get nominated for several awards, I will be pretty amazed.
it's a really wonderful date move, really. It unnerved me in a way that I cannot explain without spoiling the whole film, but lets just say, if your loved one owns a diary, be afraid.
Very afraid.