Every few years, audiences are tricked into thinking a David Fincher movie is good. While some of them are indeed good, his latest, Gone Girl, a film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling airport read of the same name, is not. With the film’s 87% on Rotten Tomatoes indicating “universal acclaim,” David Fincher has critics and moviegoers alike raving about a movie that is exactly like all of his others, but contains none of the redeeming qualities of his previous two films The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Gone Girl could best be categorized as a “romance thriller.” The film’s main characters, Amy and Nick, are hot, thirty-somethings whose seven year relationship has faced many ups and downs. A notable “up” is when the two have hot, passionate sex in a bookstore on their third anniversary. A notable “down” is when Amy goes missing and Nick becomes her suspected killer. The narrators are unreliable, the plot is carefully crafted, and the level of suspension of disbelief required by the audience to enjoy the film is unbelievably high.
Fincher, a noted Hollywood “auteur” has a very distinct filmmaking style. That said, Gone Girl is almost too “on brand” for Fincher. Not only does he use the same composers who scored both The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, but he also uses his go-to cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth, who shot both of those films in addition to Fincher’s 1999 hit Fight Club. The score and cinematography worked for and enhanced Fincher’s previous films in a way that did not work for Gone Girl. The score feels tired, as does the look of the movie. Everything about Gone Girl is very The Social Network, but not as good.
The score for Gone Girl is too experimental, and too deliberately ominous considering the already overtly ominous tone of the film. The film’s opening scene, a dramatic voice over monologue by Nick while he strokes his wife’s hair and says something about bashing her head in, is accompanied by typical Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross “haunting” music. The music remains through the first scene flashback where Nick and Amy meet. Gone Girl relies too heavily on music as a foreshadowing tool and the music overwhelms the ridiculous drama that ensues throughout the film. Fincher’s choice to use Reznor & Ross in The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo feels very deliberate, whereas his choice to use Reznor & Ross for Gone Girl feels passive and lazy.
Jeff Cronenweth, Gone Girl’s cinematographer, employs camera techniques also used in Fight Club, The Social Network, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The film is appropriately dark and pretty, as all of Fincher’s films are, but the aesthetic is tired. Cronenweth’s work on Fight Club, The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo worked because it was a new. There were distinct aesthetic choices made with those films which felt relevant and specific to the films themselves. The apparent lack of effort that went into designing a unique visual concept for Gone Girl is entirely evident. The movie seems to have been shot in an auteur style by an auteur who is no longer “auteuring.”
Overall, Gone Girl is an easy movie to sit through because of its undeniably captivating story. While lurid and at times cheap, Gone Girl is interesting from start to finish. Gone Girl is not, however, a good movie. It is nothing new and nothing special. David Fincher knows what the masses want and David Fincher gives the masses what they want. David Fincher’s take on Gone Girl is boring, lazy, and assumes very little of its audience.