Looking at the sea of 4 and 5 stars here attached to Gone Girl, I can tell I’m not going to win any new friends, and will probably test the patience of old ones. I enjoyed the film well enough as a thriller, and thought the performances adequate., but not great, but, I was never bored over the overlong runtime.

Usually, after I watch a film I’ll put down bullet points from which I can craft a review later. I really don’t think I want to review this one. I was considering posting a glib ‘Poor Barney’ single statement review, but decided not to. I wasn't as big a fan of The Social Network as everyone else was, nor Zodiac for that matter, I did consider both those superior films, though.

-Voiceover with Ben staring moodily at a house made me smile, no smirk. Is Fincher channeling Malick?

-the ‘sweep me off my feet’ first act just seemed scripted to me. This is where I really had to buy in, but had trouble doing so.

-This settled down when the disappearance happened, and for the first 30 minutes or so I was genuinely intrigued.

-The whole girlfriend / makeout at sisters place scene made me cringe. What would have been more interesting is watching loyal girlfriend watching the proceedings from afar, going from entirely supporting him to hating him and then ‘getting ahead of the story’. There was no need for the sex scene.

-When the media attacks began, it just seemed like to blunt a comment about media and the court of public opinion. You literally didn’t see a TV after that without the story running.

-10 minutes of exposition when we find out Amy is alive. Wouldn’t it have been more fun to discover it ourselves?

- I felt every twist coming from a mile away. Even the money belt, couldn’t have been set up more obviously

-Why would she continue correspondence with Neil Patrick Harris? She didn’t know she’d need him as a safety net. Why not call her parents, who already know about the affair and hate Ben, and be complicit with them?

-Neil Patrick Harris telling Amy when they’re at the lake house ‘don’t worry, you’re safe, look at all these cameras, and all of them are being recorded’ .. well, aside from another great big pointing stick and Checkov’s gun, how does this even make sense? ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe because everything is being recorded … if a murderer comes in here and hacks you to pieces, It’ll all be on tape.

-Staying with her because of an unborn child? Leaving her would be completely explainable. She was tormented, things just didn’t work out, there would be no issue having access. In fact, him pulling exactly what she did would have been a much more interesting ending.

-Moralizing on the state of marriage was just too blunt. Very little thoughts of murder in my marriage. Can’t speak for Lise, though.

-Possibly a comment on stupidity, as if Afflick could spend 5 years married to Amy, and not see the psychopath warning light, then he’s decidedly dumb.

I love subtle black comedy, and I was really trying to see that angle in Gone Girl, but, if Fincher was up to that, he buried it too deeply. I don’t believe it anyway. I think the film could have been brilliant if it was a black comedy.

-Oooh, there’s that voicover again.

-Poor Barney.