I went in expecting Jagten/The Hunt...

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2015)

...and what I got was part that and part tongue-in-cheek winks and nods at those who know their Hitchcock. Yes, watching Gone Girl was definitely a strange experience The film focuses on Nick Dunne whose wife, Amy, has disappeared. He contacts the police and an investigation is started, resulting in a giant search. The film chronicles his search for her with flashbacks to when he first met her all the way to their marriage troubles. This, combined with strange clues in the present investigation, gives plenty of reason to suspect Nick. I'll refrain from saying anything more as I would be giving too much away. I'll be talking about the film's second half from here on, so I've you're intending on remaining spoiler-free, then stop here. Reviewing this film is impossible without talking about it anyway. As such, this review will be both review and mini-analysis.
To state what I liked about Gone Girl isn't really insightful as to what kind of film this is. Yes, the acting and production values are great, there are some really tense scenes and there's a lot of dialogue that's really fun and clever, but that's not the point. What defines this film is its shift in style about halfway in. The first half is more what I expected, a police investigation where you're constantly wondering whether Nick's guilty or not. Then, we discover Amy staged her own disappearance out of spite. This goes back to their failing marriage. This is precisely when the film does a 180 and changes in style completely. What was first sort of a straightforward whodunit has turned into craziness with plenty of nods to Hitchcock and the like. We flashback to how Amy staged her disappearance which involves drawing a lot of blood from her veins while reading a book so she doesn't faint, breaking furniture, but rearranging certain things so that it looks staged (making Nick look suspicious), etc. This crazy amount of planning changes everything. You don't show a scene like that and still pretend you're an intelligent thriller dealing with concepts of 'innocent until proved guilty' and commenting on how the media influence public opinion, etc. Towards the end she stages another escape from another obsessed lover. She returns home all bloodied and embraces Nick outside their house while the media take pictures, obviously interpreting it as the couple being reunited. But Nick doesn't really trust her (and can you blame him!?), but when he says he'll leave, Amy counters by saying how that'll look on national television. So they remain together and put on a good face for the press.
It's only when you've watched Gone Girl that you can fully realize that it's almost like the two halves were directed by different people. The first half is straightforward. You watch the investigation develop, you're alternating between trust and suspicion as to whether or not Nick is guilty and you see how the media affects public perception. This reminded me of Vinterberg's Jagten. But the second half is an entirely different beast. Amy isn't just some poor woman who's gone missing, but a sociopath. She meticulously stages (future) crime scenes like it's nothing, slashing someone's throat with a Stanley knife in one of them and eventually returns to Nick (who reached out to her during a TV interview). Unsurprisingly, he tries to make her a suspect when she's questioned by the authorities, but eventually he's forced to resume his relationship with her. The second half isn't so much about the role of the media and all that, but one big meta-commentary on Hitchcockian thrillers and inside jokes. There's the notion of the perfect murder that's toyed with. There's even a scene where Nick and Amy are showering just after she's returned and the blood on her body is literally seen flowing down the drain. It would make Hitchcock chuckle.
The film starts out as one thing and becomes something else entirely. The problem is that the second half feels really over-the-top and all the nods to thrillers feels tongue-in-cheek, like you're supposed to be in on the joke. The film however remains deadly serious (especially given the first half) and that's the problem. What starts as social commentary ends up as a self-aware exercise in making thrillers. There's nothing wrong with thisif the entire film was like this, but it's not. The second half feels incredibly removed from the feel of the first half and it was hard to take it seriously. I felt like I was supposed to laugh at all the inside jokes, but all the seriousness made it hard for me to do so. Perhaps if the entire film was filled with nods and winks at the audience... In this sense, it's like House of Cards which I reviewed recently and is basically a ridiculous show that takes itself really seriously. The same general critique applies here. What makes this comparison even more interesting is that Fincher directed two episodes of House of Cards and serves as an executive producer. I guess when a character actually uses the word 'meta', you have to anticipate the film will work on multiple levels (like casting Affleck of all people which would make many people immediately wary of Nick). But that doesn't mean the end result is going to be something I will love.