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Movie review of "Gerald's Game"
Oct. 15th, 2017 11:30 amAlexx and I have been big fans of the director Mike Flanagan ever since we saw his first full-length movie, "Oculus," so when we saw that his newest film, "Gerald's Game," based on Stephen King's book, had just become available on Netflix, we jumped on it.
Flanagan quite literally outdid himself on this film, to which I give a jaw-dropping "Wow."
Most people know the set up for the plot: Gerald and his wife Jessie arrive at an isolated cabin for a romantic weekend in hopes of reviving their marriage, but after Gerald's sex game of handcuffing Jessie to a bedpost ends abruptly with Gerald dropping dead of a heart attack, Jessie is left helpless to deal with various dangers, not least of which are her own disturbing memories.
I've mentioned before that I don't watch movies which include the emotional and/or sexual abuse of women and children, but I am qualifying that in regard to this movie:
Jessie's experiences of emotional and sexual abuse are seamlessly wowven into her story, they are part of who she is. Her sense of powerlessness at the beginning of the story is a kind of psychological and emotional impotence which mirrors Gerald's sexual impotence. Throughout the movie we see Jessie develop into a different kind of final girl, one whose hardest battle is to learn to confront and conquer her inner demons. This film made me aware of how little credit Stephen King gets for creating such complex female characters as Jessie, and how little attention is given to his novels featuring female protagonists, such as _Doris Claiborne_ (which has narrative links to _Gerald's Game_), _Rose Madder_, and _Lisey's Story_ (another Mike Flanagan favorite). Btw, if Carla Gugino, who plays Jessie, doesn't get nominated for an award for her performance in this film I'll be very disappointed.
Perhaps you've heard the William Faulkner quote: "The past isn't dead; the past isn't even past." I mentioned that Jessie's past and present are seamlessly woven together, and Flanagan's technique for accomplishing this is one of the most stunning aspects of the film. He did it before in his film "Oculus," but in "Gerald's Game" he does it on a much larger, more intricate, scale. In a GQ article, Flanagan mentions how Stephen King's book _Gerald's Game_ was his favorite book, and he tried to pitch it as a movie for years, despite people repeatedly telling him that it was unfilmable.
I'm bemused by the thought that it might well have been his mental exercise in attempting to solve the problem of filming his favorite book that led to his ability to present multiple timelines not just happening simultaneously, but interacting with and influencing each other.
One of the things I love about horror movies is that the sound design often speaks for itself, and "gerald's Game" is going to become one of my favorite examples of this.
I've mentioned before how horror directors often use sound to make scenes more scary, and Flanagan has fully embraced this. I have a pretty simple test for how good a film's sound design is, which is that I can tell what's going on solely by the sound of the movie, without Alexx describing it. There is this one infamously horrifying scene in the story, and when we got to it, Alexx was too grossed out to describe it in detail, but trust me, it was just as horrifying to listen to.
I'm tempted to go on and gush about how great the script is, but this review is already too long, so I'll just settle for saying that Stephen king novels tend toward having lots of words, but Flanagan chose all the best ones for this film.
Now I'll just be impatiently anticipating Flanagan's next work, a Netflix series adaptation of Shirley Jackson's _The Haunting of Hill House_, which will also star Carla Gugino.
Flanagan quite literally outdid himself on this film, to which I give a jaw-dropping "Wow."
Most people know the set up for the plot: Gerald and his wife Jessie arrive at an isolated cabin for a romantic weekend in hopes of reviving their marriage, but after Gerald's sex game of handcuffing Jessie to a bedpost ends abruptly with Gerald dropping dead of a heart attack, Jessie is left helpless to deal with various dangers, not least of which are her own disturbing memories.
I've mentioned before that I don't watch movies which include the emotional and/or sexual abuse of women and children, but I am qualifying that in regard to this movie:
Jessie's experiences of emotional and sexual abuse are seamlessly wowven into her story, they are part of who she is. Her sense of powerlessness at the beginning of the story is a kind of psychological and emotional impotence which mirrors Gerald's sexual impotence. Throughout the movie we see Jessie develop into a different kind of final girl, one whose hardest battle is to learn to confront and conquer her inner demons. This film made me aware of how little credit Stephen King gets for creating such complex female characters as Jessie, and how little attention is given to his novels featuring female protagonists, such as _Doris Claiborne_ (which has narrative links to _Gerald's Game_), _Rose Madder_, and _Lisey's Story_ (another Mike Flanagan favorite). Btw, if Carla Gugino, who plays Jessie, doesn't get nominated for an award for her performance in this film I'll be very disappointed.
Perhaps you've heard the William Faulkner quote: "The past isn't dead; the past isn't even past." I mentioned that Jessie's past and present are seamlessly woven together, and Flanagan's technique for accomplishing this is one of the most stunning aspects of the film. He did it before in his film "Oculus," but in "Gerald's Game" he does it on a much larger, more intricate, scale. In a GQ article, Flanagan mentions how Stephen King's book _Gerald's Game_ was his favorite book, and he tried to pitch it as a movie for years, despite people repeatedly telling him that it was unfilmable.
I'm bemused by the thought that it might well have been his mental exercise in attempting to solve the problem of filming his favorite book that led to his ability to present multiple timelines not just happening simultaneously, but interacting with and influencing each other.
One of the things I love about horror movies is that the sound design often speaks for itself, and "gerald's Game" is going to become one of my favorite examples of this.
I've mentioned before how horror directors often use sound to make scenes more scary, and Flanagan has fully embraced this. I have a pretty simple test for how good a film's sound design is, which is that I can tell what's going on solely by the sound of the movie, without Alexx describing it. There is this one infamously horrifying scene in the story, and when we got to it, Alexx was too grossed out to describe it in detail, but trust me, it was just as horrifying to listen to.
I'm tempted to go on and gush about how great the script is, but this review is already too long, so I'll just settle for saying that Stephen king novels tend toward having lots of words, but Flanagan chose all the best ones for this film.
Now I'll just be impatiently anticipating Flanagan's next work, a Netflix series adaptation of Shirley Jackson's _The Haunting of Hill House_, which will also star Carla Gugino.
