A taut, nuanced psychological thriller which demands the audience play detective.

Rating: 9/10 (27 October 2014)

I'm going to start by saying, I absolutely love how this movie is polarising people. Just browsing IMDb quickly you get a sense that people either love it and totally understood the tone, or hate it and understood some of the tone but maybe not all. In my opinion of course. This is often the sign of a great film, better to be loved or hated than merely tolerated.
I got it. I really really enjoyed this. I watched it due to there being a fairly poor selection of other movies to stack it against that were showing in my area, and going in with no assumptions or expectations I was nearly blown away, and about halfway through realised it might be one of those movies I watch several times throughout the course of my life.
It's a lot of a things - another strong psychological study of sociopathy, a fairly well aimed critique of the tarnished sanctity of marriage (translation: marriage in this day and age is kind of a BS idea), an excellent use of the unreliable narrator plot device and in my opinion Fincher's best film since Fight Club. Yes, there are a few contrived coincidences and moments where the reality is heightened and stretched, but just remember - what if it's the character's recollection that has done this? Adds another level to the film and aids suspension of disbelief - it's the CHARACTER's bad storytelling, the film is intelligent and self-aware enough to allow this.
Most of all, I love that it's a prescient social commentary, subtly exploring how the power of the media has increased with soap-opera style histrionics and truth warped beyond recognition, something deconstructed throughout and bluntly summarised when Nick and smarmy half-wit reporter Ellen speak before the reunion interview and he gives her a piece of his mind (I'm trying to avoid putting in spoilers hence the vagueness). Two awkward moments - the smile and the photo - and the whole country is willing to crucify him as a hot-tempered, sociopathic cad and deify his missing wife, the blameless and pure golden girl, America's gorgeous sweetheart, the real life inspiration for popular children's character Amazing Amy - the fairytale effect as it applies to the news in real life, and the equally damaging effects of social media when used for the same ends.
The film is also smart enough to make the whole world and cast gray, rather than fairytale black and white, so almost any viewpoint postulated throughout could be a possibility. Maybe some of the wild speculations about the main characters in the film's version of news reporting could be correct... for example, Nick's relationship with Margo, is it a standard sibling thing or is there something unsavoury beneath? It's up to you to decide when and where the characters are being truthful, and if/when they are being misunderstood. If at all. It literally is one of those movies that could be interpreted a different way each time you watch it, your allegiances changed by the perspective you watch it in at the time, by subtle clues you may only just have noticed.
I could write pages on this, I really could. I need to see it again to remember all the little nuances that lurk within, the masterful touches that make this more than a cheesy TV movie with a higher budget. Affleck can act, something I'd forgotten as it's been a while since Good Will Hunting, and Pike plays one of the best femme fatales since Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction or that other one in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle - for me she is to movie females what Hannibal Lecter is to movie males, a cold and calculating psychotic who uses emotions like pieces in a chess game, for whom the satisfaction is creating a puzzle/trap and watching with glee as everyone stumbles into it like rats in a maze looking for the cheese. The audience is complicit in this - we have to run around looking for clues, playing detective, deciding whose truth is closest to the actual series of events.
Anyway, my TL;DR is the text I sent a friend of mine to summarise: If you haven't already seen Gone Girl, I'd highly recommend it. Dark, intelligent psychological thriller with some mystery elements and a careful helping of social commentary. Arguably Fincher's best work since Fight Club.