‘Sadistic, forbidden pleasure’: why Gone Girl is my feelgood movie

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their go-to comfort films is a reminder of the dark joys that can be found in David Fincher’s devilish thriller “When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head,” narrates Ben Affleck in the opening scene of

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their go-to comfort films is a reminder of the dark joys that can be found in David Fincher’s devilish thriller “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. Continue reading...