Twisty, Turny and Temperamental, Gone Girl Will Hook You to the Very End

Rating: 7/10 (29 August 2015)

David Fincher works wonders with a seemingly-difficult literary adaptation once again. Here he keeps us impaled on the hook through a twisting, thrashing, contorting murder mystery where nothing, not even the victim, is remotely as it seems. It's a great ride, one which delights in misleading the viewer into endless amounts of incorrect assumptions, while also managing to spotlight several timely, pertinent thoughts about the excesses of a 24-hour news cycle and the public's gullible yearning for their next big chance to cast shame upon a pariah. Gone Girl is effective, dramatic, gripping and entrancing for most of its duration, but does overstay its welcome and begin to unravel in the last twenty minutes. With most of the answers already on the table, it's strange that the film lingers for so long after the fact, neurotically toying with its own plot holes and giving its audience time to do the same. That's not enough to completely undo all of the good that had come before, of course, but it's plenty to cast a little doubt.