Decent story, lame ending

Rating: 6/10 (2 November 2015)

Gone Girl is a tale told from the dual perspectives of a husband and wife, whose declining marriage leads to the disappearance of the wife. The story is dark and cruel, with both of the main characters being both flawed and not particularly likable. The audience starts out not liking Ben Affleck's character (Nick) because they don't know what happened to Rosamund Pike's character (Amy). But as we learn more about Amy, we begin to root for Nick, who is the lesser of the two evils. Two strong supportive roles come from Neil Patrick Harris as a rich but hapless beta admirer of Amy's that she can easily manipulate, and Carrie Coon as Nick's sister Margo, who serves as Nick's wavering moral compass.
The one problem with this movie is its weak ending. After Nick finally regains his freedom after being charged with Amy's murder, he lives uneasily with her in their large home, sleeping in separate bedrooms. But upon learning of her pregnancy, he chooses to stay with her, and the movie ends with Nick and Amy staying together. Why would he do that? After everything she did to ruin his life and attempt to send him to prison, he suddenly gets a conscience? One possible explanation is that this ending was meant to leave the audience with the same uneasy feeling that the rest of the movie infused. If that was the script's intent, it failed on plausibility reasons. Other than that, Gone Girl is an otherwise successfully creepy movie whose storyline is well paced and breezes through its two and a half hour length.