Haunting, disturbing and funnier than you would think, Gone Girl is a perfectly acted and beautifully drawn piece of filmmaking that will leave the viewer plenty to talk about after it is over.

On the morning of her five year anniversary Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) disappears under mysterious circumstances and her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) has very few answers. The story is a big draw nationally as Amy was the subject of a line of children’s’ books called Amazing Amy and pressure mounts on Nick as he tries to navigate the waters of public opinion, scrutiny and accusation. As clues start stacking up, things don’t look so good for Nick.

Gone Girl is a story told in parts with narration focusing on Nick in the present and diary entries narrated by Amy in the past. This is the same way that screenwriter/author Gillian Flynn wrote the book and I was somewhat worried about how it would translate. With Pike’s terrific performance, it translated perfectly and offers up enough information to keep you engaged and the story moving forward but keeps back enough to keep you from knowing what is going on until it is time for you to know. Director David Fincher manages this device with skill and keeps the story moving forward without ever feeling like a slog or like the film is backtracking. When the movie is close to two and a half hours, that is really saying something.

Gone Girl is a difficult movie to review because you have to talk around a lot of big things that happen in the film. When a plot revolves around a mystery and how that is revealed it is difficult to hit on specific story points and performances without spoiling things. What I can say is that the movie, just the book it is adapted from, is more than just a mystery and serves as a mediation on relationships and a satire on sensationalized news coverage.

I can also say that it would be almost impossible to come out of this movie feeling nothing. The film plays with the viewers emotions from start to finish and toys with perception and the reliability of narration and I cannot imagine someone having no reaction emotionally to the wringer it puts you through. For me, I had the same emotional response to the movie as I did to the book and given the intensity of that feeling I have to applaud the film for managing to get such a reaction when I knew what to expect going in. Certainly it could just be my own expectation of how to feel and carrying the emotion over from the book but judging by audience reaction around me I think the film does a great job of arriving on that feeling on its own steam.

Visually, this is another win for David Fincher who gives us gorgeous shots and composition against the stark, bleak atmosphere. The shots ooze with tension and the muted color palette serves to turn down the volume a bit and make it feel like things are closing in. Following Nick Dunne is not particularly easy and the mounting pressure he feels is expressed not just through performance but by how the shots are presented and what they look like when they do. This goes a long way in establishing the right tone and conveys the right feeling even when the movie doesn’t have time to linger quite as much on certain scenes as the book did.

The performances here are great across the board. Ben Affleck is no stranger to public scrutiny and he brings the full measure of that experience to bear here as a character that you aren’t sure if you should be rooting for but can’t help but like a bit anyway. Kim Dickens in equally great as Detective Boney and manages to keep the veneer of civility going without feeling disingenuous while of course not necessarily being on the level either. This is a multi-layered and nuanced performance that provides an anchor for the audience looking for any amount of stability in a story that keeps them off balance. For his part, Patrick Fugit does a great job as Boney’s partner Gilpin and though he is much more straight forward in his contempt for Nick, he does an expert job of expressing that while being a profession. Fugit works wonders with his body language and posture. Carrie Coon is rock solid as Nick’s sister Margo and handles the emotional weight of loving her brother while worrying that maybe he is a killer without going to far in either direction. Tyler Perry was pretty much perfect as the celebrity lawyer Nick hires to defend himself and I was very happy to see Tanner Bolt handled well.

The biggest standouts for me in the movie, though, were Neil Patrick Harris and Rosamund Pike. I have liked Pike in everything I have seen her in prior to this but she gives a tour de force performance that is staggering. Even when just doing voice over narration Pike delivers perfectly and elicits just what is needed for the film. I have a hard time imagining anyone walking away from this without admiration of Pike’s work. For Neil Patrick Harris’s part, I have a hard time not just liking him in general and feeling like he would be a fun guy to hang out with but here…holy shit. He turns the creepy dial up to 11 and provides us with a character that just oozes. It is a totally against type performance and he handles it with extreme skill.

Conclusion [10 out of 10]

To put it simply, Gone Girl is an amazing film. It is filled with terrific performances and looks beautiful while keeping the pace moving. There are elements of the story that make me very angry but that is not because it is bad but because that is how I was meant to feel. The reaction is visceral and profound and I doubt very strongly that viewers will leave feeling nothing. If a summer of blockbusters have left you cold, this is a film that will definitely leave you feeling something and give you a lot to talk about with your friends over coffee afterward.