The film does an excellent job of reeling the viewer in, begging them to question what they are hearing against what they are seeing. The house shows no signs of forced entry, a smashed table with no other areas disturbed, along with blood residue on the kitchen floor. How could Nick have done this, he seems completely honest in his inability to cope with the situation? This is where Gillian Flynn’s script (adapting her own novel) reveals the brilliance of utilizing unreliable narration to build the mystery and suspense.

The media within “Gone Girl” are used as an asset to toy with the audience. As Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and Officer Jim Gilpin (Partick Gilpin) investigate, news outlets impact public perception of Nick at the flip of a coin. Pointing the finger at Nick seemed the last possibility, but soon pictures of Nick smiling with supporters and implications of incest with his sister turn the public against Nick. Detective Rhonda comes to no conclusion of Nick without evidence to support it, while Officer Jim argues they have their man. The discovery of Amy’s journal describing her fear of Nick, portraying him as domestically abusive, attempting to purchase a gun: all turn the audience to believe him guilty. Interviews and public perception, as Nick’s lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), explains will either condemn him or free him. To make matters worse, Nick is revealed to have been cheating on Amy with a college student. Now Nick has to be guilty. Wrong again.

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Barely halfway through the film, we enter the territory that flips the film right side up. Entering the void of preposterous, the audience must suspend their disbelief and ready themselves for a twist. Another film to keep in mind might be Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” an ingenious mystery thriller that forces the viewer to question what is real. Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is kidnapped and interrogated after being mistaken for a spy. They force him to drink and nearly dies whilst driving away from his captors. After returning to the mansion he finds all evidence of the incident are gone and he wonders who will believe him. The narrative of “Gone Girl” is masterfully crafted with clever changes of pace. Assumptions by the audience are purposefully made, only to throw them out the window to make way for new ones. Though some of the twists never quite reach Hitchcockian intelligence. Don’t get me wrong, “Gone Girl” is smart, but it isn’t that smart.

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Other elements of the film greatly make up for this, including of course Fincher’s direction. Filled with grim greys and dark characters that exemplify the composition, he establishes colourful framing that is a tour de force of ingenuity. I must also mention the cinematography of Jeff Cronenweth who realizes Fincher’s vision with aesthetical affluence. What we see on screen would not have been possible without him, crafting some of Fincher’s best works over the past decade.

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Fincher’s direction goes hand in hand with the soundtrack scored by Atticus Ross and Trent Roznor, who capture the emotion of the film and create tension for the audience that goes jointly with the tension between Nick and Amy’s narration. Some of the supporting cast bring comedic value to the otherwise intentionally serious nature of “Gone Girl,” specifically Neil Patrick Harris playing Amy’s ex-boyfriend from college. I couldn’t quite take him seriously as a character, but then again maybe that was the point.

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While the film’s plot and narrative may be lacking compared to Fincher’s “The Social Network” or “Zodiac” for trying to be too many things at once, the direction and performances of it’s two leads more than made up for its faults. “Gone Girl” might have taken copious swerves down Shyamalan lane, but I still found it to be one of the most intelligent films of the year for its portrait of public image in the media, how finances can bring about the worst in people, and how appearances of evidence can be misleading. It brings crime intestigation to the 21st century without failure, though hopefully next time we’ll get more realism in the mixture instead of fantasy.