I may have misspoken. IT was a fabulously fun and terrifying flick, but it's not the best Stephen King adaptation this year. That label belongs firmly on Gerald's Game, available on Netflix. Mike Flanagan's newest film is yet another jewel in his severely underrated crown. It joins his masterpieces Oculus and Hush as some of the most emotionally intelligent, psychologically thrilling horror movies ever made.
If you still haven't read King's novel or seen the film, proceed with caution. Spoilers abound. Part of the thrill of this game was, for me, having no idea what might happen next.
To save their sexless -- even touchless -- marriage, Jessie and Gerald escape to an isolated lake house in Alabama. A successful lawyer, Gerald harbors expensive tastes and an assertive personality, while Jessie seems mostly along for the ride. She stops her husband from hitting a stray dog in the road, then cooks insanely expensive meat to feed the beast. When Gerald pops some Viagra and pulls out some handcuffs for a sex game, she seems a little unnerved but willing to entertain his desires. Unfortunately for her, he quickly becomes aggressive, even beginning to enact a rape fantasy, and she tries to stop him. Either due to her kicking him off, the emotional stress of the situation, or the extra pills in his bloodstream, Gerald has a heart attack, falls off the bed, hits his head, and dies.
This is only the first twenty minutes or so.
What follows for over an hour is intense psychodrama into Jessie's mind. Her attempts to free herself are unfruitful, and as dehydration sets in, she begins to hallucinate. Gerald taunts her and they discuss their failed marriage; a vision of herself appears and reminds her of a glass of water on the shelf above. The visions seem as real as the dog, who enters the room and begins to feed on Gerald's bloody corpse, and a haunting specter who appears at night with a box of bones and trinkets. She refers to the deformed man as "made of moonlight," and Gerald suggests that he is Death incarnate. Jessie begins remembering the past; as a girl, her family vacationed at a lake house where she was sexually abused by her manipulative father. For the rest of the film, flashbacks and hallucinations and reality meld into a nightmarish descent into her mind.
Carla Gugino gives what might be a career-best performance in a very difficult role, riveting our eyes to the screen and allowing each new horror to take her for a ride. Close-ups on her face provide her with ample opportunities to mine each moment for all their dramatic worth, and her multi-layered efforts are never taken for granted by the camera. Bruce Greenwood is almost as absorbing as a man navigating the waters of power and influence in a marriage. His is a thankless part, but one that allows for range and depth; at times he is vindictive and dangerous, at others sweet and eager to help.
Mike Flanagan's direction here makes what could easily be a boring or stuffy story a sort of Icy-Hot exercise. Alternating between heated, close-up action shots and distant, chilly horror shots, the film proceeds with calculated, deliberate pace, forcing us to invest our attention and feelings. He makes the film a sort of chamber piece, and more than once I wondered if he was making a case that this could (and should) be done on stage. Almost the whole film takes place in the bedroom of the lake house, and even those that don't seem informed by the bedroom set. Memories of a solar eclipse might well have taken place just beyond the outer wall; memories of dinner, cut hands, and daddy issues bleed into the waking reality of Jessie's situation. Especially in the second half, impressionistic lighting challenge our understanding of atmosphere and perception, as the vibrant red of fading sunlight warp shadows and inform the film's editing (well done, editor!).
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the specter of Death was actually real, a grave robber/necrophile/serial killer/cannibal who spared Jessie because he prefers male victims. The finale -- through no fault of the film, mind, but the source material -- is a bit weird, I'll admit, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's horrific, to be sure, but there's a certain level of gimmicky coincidence that bothers me. Thankfully, it is tempered by Jessie's character arc, which triumphs over diseased, fatalistic modern masculinity and allows her to walk, at last, out from the bloody eclipse and into clear yellow sunlight.
IMDb: Gerald's Game
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