Les apparences

I like it when a movie can keep me guessing until the end, and Gone Girl just did that. Most of the time I didn't know where this film was going, and each new twist and turn was a surprise. You can't help but get pulled into the story. The actors all gave excellent performances, as well. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at some of them the same way again. This movie is what a crime thriller should be.

I'm not one for reviews, but I tremendously enjoyed this film but felt empty at the end of it. That ending was shockingly bad, such a let down to a great film. Still worth watching but you will end up cursing the writers, producers and perhaps even the actors for that low quality ending. Even if the story was written to end this way, it could have been communicated far better and with far more realistic excitement. It seems like they just plonked it at the end rather than continue the story. What the hell happened? Did they run out of time or needed to release it by a specific date or did the original scriptwriter run off? The end the film was not of the same quality of the rest of the film and left me feeling shortchanged.

Two movies for the price of one.

That's a fairly glib start to a review of a movie that I really liked, but it is true. The first half of Gone Girl is a fairly standard "did he or didn't he" mystery thriller. Then, about an hour in, the perspective shifts entirely and suddenly you realise that you're watching – perhaps – the most pitch-black comedy that you've ever seen.

Despite the abrupt shift, I still think that Gone Girl holds together extremely well as one whole movie. Ben Affleck's Nick manages to inspire sympathy without ever being truly likable while Rosamund Pike's Amy (the star of the show in my opinion) is brilliant, terrifying, hilarious and despicable in various combinations and occasionally all at the same time.

David Fincher's direction is both classy and clever (as usual) and several scenes are particularly outstanding due at least as much to his brilliance as that of the actors involved in them. My one complaint would be over the length – it really didn't need to be two and a quarter hours long. There were certainly a few moments, particularly in the first half, when I wished that the movie would hurry up and get to the point just a little more quickly.

Gone Girl is a movie unlike any that I've ever seen before and as such largely defies further description. I would recommend this movie to all (with a warning that the adult rating is well earned) but especially those with a dark sense of humour. The darker the better.

This is a 2.5 hour movie and sometimes these days it's difficult for me to stick with the longer movies but this never felt long. You were always curious what was going on. Let's just say it didn't quite go the way I expected but I was intrigued the whole time. The acting was great. This could for sure be considered a slow burn and I'm actually currently watching the TV show Sharp Objects by the same author and this is paced much better than that. There's a couple things I didn't particularly thing got solved or like how they went at the end but overall a great movie.

There's no denying that this is a great film and from what I've heard a great book as well, you can see that I gave it a 9/10 rating, but there's a catch especially for me personally with this movie. The shorts version I can tell you and with my hand to God no lie this movie single handedly put the nail in the coffin for my marriage without me even being the wiser. So for as much as I do appreciate the detailed and intriguing story, watching it years later after my divorce it sends chills through my body knowing that my ex wife and I enjoyed this movie together, and obviously me not knowing just how much she loved it but how it inspired her to go about divorcing me in the way that she did, be weary because there are sick people (men and women) in this world that will vindictively assassinate someone else's character and well being just to avenge whatever perversion that they're transfixed on in their own mind. I'm not looking for sympathy or anything, I'm just stating a fact that happened to me, I don't advise watching this for the first time with a love partner, it could unhinge the mind beyond a point of no return, I'm absolutely 100% serious about this, this is not a joke.