A dark yet interesting story about love, marriage, cheating and revenge.
***Spoilers alert***
Amy disappears. Nick cooperates with the Police and the audience thinks that he is a good man at first. As the plot thickens, because of Nick's inappropriate smile in front of the press, an inappropriate selfie with a random woman, an affair with a student, and more and more evidences pointing at Nick, making the viewers to start to think that, well, maybe Nick did kill his wife.
Half way through the movie, all of a sudden, we see Amy driving in a car and we hear her "cool girl" monologue. It turns out Amy has faked her own death and planted evidence against Nick because she thought "Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money".
Amy unfolds her plan in her monologue. "To fake a convincing murder you have to have discipline. You befriend a local idiot and cram her with stories about her husband's violent temper. Secretly create some money troubles: credit cards, perhaps online gambling. With the help of the unwitting, bump up your life insurance. Purchase getaway car. Craigslist. Generic, cheap, pay cash...You know what's hard? Faking a pregnancy. First drain your toilet. Invite pregnant idiot into your home and ply her with lemonade. Steal pregnant idiot's urine. Voila! A pregnancy is now part of your legal medical record. Happy Anniversary. Wait for your clueless husband to start his day. Off he goes...and the clock is ticking. Meticulously stage your crime scene with just enough mistakes to raise the specter of doubt. You need to bleed. A lot, a lot. The head wound kind of bleed. A crime scene kind of bleed. You need to clean, poorly, like he would. Clean and bleed, bleed and clean. And leave something behind: a fire in July? And because you're you, you don't stop there. You need a diary. Minimum three hundred entries on the Nick and Amy story. Start with the fair-tale early days: those are true, and they're crucial. You want Nick and Amy to be likable. After that, you invent. The spending, the abuse, the fear, the threat of violence..."
Amy thinks that she is smart, charming, and cool. She thinks she made Nick smarter, sharper and rise to her level. Amy and Nick used to be fun together. Amy would play treasure hunts with Nick on anniversaries to add spice to their marriage. But after Nick loses his job and decides to move to Missouri, everything starts to go south. She thinks Nick gets lazy and dares her to be someone she doesn't want to be: the nagging wife or the controlling bitch.
I think the way Amy takes revenge on Nick is too dramatic. She wants Nick to pay the price for cheating on her. But when she kills Desi, who cares for her, and frames him for kidnapping, starving and raping her, in order to go back to Nick (because she cares so much about her public image and doesn't want to be a pariah), it proves that she is a sociopath. Nick did not kill his wife but he was not a good man either. Moreover, the couple has irreconcilable differences in their values. For example, Nick said, "I loved you and then all we did was resent each other, try to control each other. We caused each other pain." Amy replied,"That's marriage." That's why Tanner Bolt said that they are the most fucked-up people he has ever known.
I like the editing of the movie. There are only seconds between each cut in Amy's monologue and it makes the scene more tense. We often don't see a lot of dissolves as a transition in movies nowadays, but the editor uses it in the scene where Nick pushed Amy. It makes Nick and Amy looks more shocked by the event. The sound editing is also very good as it increases suspense and tension. I like the colour timing of the movie. The darkness demonstrates the director's auteurism and aesthetics.
Though there are plot holes in the movie, such as why the hospital staff would let Amy go while she is covered with blood, it doesn't matter because the story is interesting and staggering.
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