Gone Girl

Gone Girl was a gripping movie that shocked me and kept shocking me. The story revolves around the marriage of Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike). You're introduced to how they first met, how Nick proposes to her, and also the deterioration of their marriage and breakdown in communication. Amy appears to have been kidnapped and all signs point to Nick. For the first half of the movie, there's pretty much no way you can believe this guy even though he's acting smug as hell and saying he didn't do it. What's worse is he's been cheating on Amy with Andie Hardy, Emily Ratajkowski. Doesn't look so good for Nick, until we find out that Amy's just run away and has contrived the whole plan! She's even gone so far as to plan to kill herself. After she gets in a kerfuffle with some people staying at a trailer park, Amy is forced to contact an ex-boyfriend / stalker, Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris), who is happy to take her in given his fixation with her. Amy sees Nick apologize to her on TV while at Desi's and wants to go back home but Desi won't let her go that quickly. So, she makes it look as though Desi has captured her and she ends up killing Desi in order to return. She arrives back to Nick who is astonished that she even returns and he wishes to leave her. But Amy won't allow it. She manipulates Nick into staying by getting herself pregnant and showcasing it all over TV. Overall, Nick was a bad husband and made Amy feel like she didn't have any life. So, when Amy sees Nick and Andie and how Nick has fallen out of love with her, Amy conjures up one of the most elaborate plans to seek revenge. This really is a striking difference for me in terms of how women and men deal with motives underlying revenge. I think men would typically use force to get their revenge, killing, etc. but Amy uses a manipulative plan that slowly eats away at Nick so that on an emotional level he felt just as dead as Amy must have. Great movie!