Blain LaMotta’s review published on Letterboxd:
David Fincher's Gone Girl feels like a culmination work of sorts for the misanthropic director. It combines elements of pointed satire, police procedural, murder mystery, and sickening comedy to glorious effect.
Much praise has to go to novelist turned screenwriter Gillian Flynn for supplying this sensational material for him to work with. She streamlines her book with ruthless efficiency and her devilish insights into marriage are frighteningly truthful and very disturbing. Fincher uses this to his advantage to supply his own thematic concerns to it and enriches it for maximum impact.
The acting across the board is exceptional from Affleck, Perry, Coon, Dickens and Harris. But, Rosamund Pike delivers the performance to remember in a role that is so complex and demanding in every emotional facet that it's scary to imagine that it could be pulled off this immaculately.
Technical merits are meticulously detailed across the board from Jeff Cronenweth's sleek, stylish cinematography to Kirk Baxter's propulsive, disorientating editing and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's dread inducing score.
Gone Girl is easily one of the best films of the year. It literally made me feel ill at one point, and if that is not praise, I don't know what is.
