“When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head,” narrates Ben Affleck in the opening scene of Gone Girl, David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of the bestselling thriller novel. “I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers to the primal questions of any marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?”
From the outset, Gone Girl probably sounds like quite an odd choice for a feelgood movie. The film follows Nick (Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), whose once-picture-perfect marriage has become a humiliatingly predictable tale of resentment and infidelity – and when Amy suddenly disappears in suspicious circumstances, it only gets more disturbing. But I find myself being drawn to this film every year when the days start to shorten. There is a strange catharsis (and comfort) in watching a scorned woman get her revenge, one meticulously planned move at a time.
Nick and Amy look as if they have it all. Their suburban home resembles something out of a White Company showroom, with high-thread-count sheets, tasteful beige furniture and one of those enormous stainless steel fridges that makes ice in any geometry you want. But when Amy goes missing and is presumed to be kidnapped or murdered, we learn that the couple is in crisis. As we go back to the start of their relationship, we see how they’ve slowly morphed into the archetypes they swore they’d never become. Nick is the philandering and unfulfilled husband who resents his wife, while Amy says she’s been forced to become a “nagging shrew” and a “controlling bitch”.
The first half of the film feels like the classic murder mystery, during which we explore the motif of trouble in paradise through Amy’s increasingly distressing diary entries. As the police search for answers, Nick becomes the centre of a trial by media and is suspected of murdering her. And then, just when we think he may have actually done it, we hear nine words that change everything: “I am so much happier now that I’m dead.” In a dramatic twist, Amy reveals that she didn’t go missing after all. Instead, she framed her husband for her murder as revenge for his infidelities.
What could possibly be comforting about this story? Despite the fact that many of Amy’s early diary entries were invented, there’s something innately soothing about the sound of Pike’s cool, calm narration. It recalls Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives (two shows that are also comfort watches), in which the narrator feels omnipresent, like an all-seeing eye that knows what’s about to happen. And despite the deviousness of Amy’s plan – and the end goal of her husband receiving the death penalty for killing her – there is not a flicker of doubt in her mind. “Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed,” she says. “That’s murder.”
There is also something freeing about watching Amy reject the gendered expectation to fade into obscurity. In fact, the feelgood factor of this movie stems from how innately Amy understands how she’s perceived. In the film’s most pivotal monologue, she details how she tried so hard to be the “cool girl” – someone hot and laid-back, who watches Adam Sandler movies and drinks canned beer and eats cold pizza without ever gaining any weight – but it still wasn’t enough to stop Nick from cheating with a twentysomething college student. It’s an astute admission that feels even more relatable in a world where we’re all performing different versions of ourselves, especially online.
When Amy goes missing, the gendered perception of her becomes her most powerful weapon. She knows that people will see her as a helpless, clueless, innocent woman whose husband betrayed her – even if, in reality, she’s secretly subverting those expectations. And when her plan unexpectedly unravels, she still finds a way to come out on top.
Armed with nothing but an immaculately cut bob and a thirst for revenge, Amy is equal parts terrifying and aspirational. There is an almost sadistic, forbidden pleasure in watching a woman so determined not to be defeated that she will do just about anything. “You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever?” Amy asks. “No way. He doesn’t get to win.” And guess what? I’m rooting for her.
Gone Girl is available on Paramount+ in the US, Amazon Prime and HBO Max in the UK, and on Stan in Australia
