DR.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL

LAW UNIVERSITY,LUCKNOW
ACADEMIC SESSION:2020-2021

ENGLISH-II
MOVIE REVIEW:GONE GIRL

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Dr.(Mrs.)Alka Singh Saddhvi Nayak
Assistant Professor(English) 200101114
RMLNLU 2nd semester(Section B)
 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the project work entitled “MOVIE

REVIEW:GONE GIRL” submitted to Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya
National Law University, Lucknow is a record of an original work done
by me under the guidance of Dr. Alka Singh , Assistant Professor, Dr.
Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University and this project work is
submitted in the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of
the degree of B.A.LLB.(Hons). The results embodied in this thesis have
not been submitted to any other University or Institute for the award of
any degree or diploma.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I express my gratitude and deep regards to my subject teacher Dr. Alka

Singh for giving me such an interesting topic and also for her exemplary
guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement throughout the course
of this project.
I would also like to thank the authorities of Madhu Limaye Library who
provided the remote access of the library to provide the research
material.
Lastly, I thank almighty, my family and friends for their constant
encouragement without which this project would have not been possible.
I know that despite my best efforts some discrepancies might have crept
in which I believe my humble professor would forgive.
Thanking you all,

Saddhvi Nayak.
 CONTENTS

S.No. TOPIC PAGE No.

1. INTRODUCTION 5-6

2. DETAILED PLOT 7-10

3. CHARACTERISATION 10-12

4. THEMES 12-13

5. CONCLUSION 13

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY 13
 INTRODUCTION
David Fincher, whose dark view of human nature often overshadows the stark
images in his movies. “GONE GIRL” is a psychological American thriller directed
by him with screenplay by Gillian Flynn based on her 2012 novel ‘gone girl’. A
beautiful woman, Amy, practically perfect in every way meets her prince charming
on one night, Nick, who is almost as flawless as she is. They get married and live
happily. Now, if one will be thinking that this story has a happy ending but Gillian
Flynn has something else in her mind. This movie is not like a fairy tale with a
happy ending. After 5 years of their marriage, on their 5th marriage anniversary,
Amy disappears and one thing leading to another her husband, Nick becomes
prime suspect of her murder. Again, it is something that is looking predictable but
not anything half of what one may predict. Just when one may think that the people
can’t get more dysfunctional and they get a hold of the story, the story turns more
dysfunctional and makes you more confused as to whom to believe. Part mystery,
part thriller, part psychological drama, gone girl is more than just a story of
marriage terribly gone wrong. It’s also a commentary on media power and the
hysteria that true crime events inspire. We get to see how the talk shows, national
media reporters, network camera crew constantly follow Nick everywhere and
accuse him of Amy’s disappearance way before the evidences were against him,
they also descended on his house like locusts. This movie has also got a powerful
message about the consequences of changing one’s identity to suit another person,
although it has given this message in creepy and disturbing angle. It’s not a
thrilling movie about some seriously disturbing people, but also a cautionary tale
that practically begs us to be happy with who we are. Till some time we may be
extremely happy in relationships by not being ourselves but that’s not how
relationships work. A time will come when we will become insane from behaving
someone else, we will become what we are and then the relationship we are
sharing goes towards downward lane.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

David Fincher (full name David Andrew Leo Fincher) was born on August 28,
1962 in Denver, Colorado, USA. His mother, Claire Mae was a mental health
nurse working for drug addictives program and his father, Howard Kelly Fincher
was an author working as reporter and bureau chief for life magazine. When
Fincher was two years old, the family moved to marin country, San Anselmo,
California where filmmaker George Lucas was one of their neighbors. At the age
of eight years old, he saw documentary on the making of Butch Cassidy and
Sundance Kid which make him interested in film making and he started making
film with 8mm camera. In his teens, Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon and
started going to Ashland High School. He started with designing sets and lighting
after school, became a projectionist at a second run movie theatre and production
assistant at a local news station. Then he was employed as production head at John
Korty’s studio and then visual effects producer, working on animated movie with
George Lucas. In 1990, Fincher married model Donya Fiorentino from which he
has one daughter born in 1994 and he divorced his wife in 1995. In 1996, he
married producer Cean Chaffin. In 1983, he was then hired by Industrial Light &
Magic (ILM) as assistant cameraman. After 1 year, he ILM to direct a television
commercial that depicted a fetus smoking cigarette. After this, he was given the
opportunity to direct a documentary and then setting on his directing career,
Fincher co-founded the production company, “Propaganda Films” and started
directing commercials and music videos. In between 1984 to 1993, Fincher
directed 53 music videos and in 1990, he was hired by 20th Century Fox to direct
“Alien 3” as his first directorial debut. However, the movie did not receive good
response but Fincher did not stop and made his second movie “Se7en” which was
better received. Like this, he debuted his career as a director and now, he is known
for his stylish movies which usually trend towards dark atmosphere. His films had
received 40 nominations at Academy awards winning 9 of them, 29 nominations at
British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards winning 7 of them
and 23 nominations at Golden Globe Awards winning 4 of them. In late 2019,
Fincher began developing a television prequel to the 1974 film CHINATOWN with
its screenwriter Robert Towne. In February 2021, it was announced that Fincher
will direct an adaption of the graphic novel “The killer” for Netflix, with Andrew
Kevin writing the screenplay and Michael Fassbender attached to star. He
previously also served as executive producer and director for the Netflix series
House of Cards (2013-2015) winning the Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding
directing for a drama series for the pilot episode of House of Cards. He also
directed Mindhunter (2017-2019) for Netflix.
 DETAILED PLOT
The opening scene of movie starts with Nick (Amy’s husband) stroking Amy’s
hair and thinking of cracking her head to see what she is thinking. His words being
“When I think of my wife, I always think of her head…I picture cracking her
lovely skull, unspooling her brains trying to get answers”. On morning of 5th July,
2012, Nick goes to his bar owned by him and his sister (bought by Amy’s money),
Margo Dunne. Margo asks him as t why his mood is off to which he replies that it
is their (Amy and Nick) fifth marriage anniversary. They talk about how every
year Amy plays treasure hunt with Nick on their anniversary to finaaly lead him to
his gift.Then the movie goes seven years back, where we see Amy writing in her
diary on January 8, 2005, about how happy she is. She addresses Nick in it by
saying she met a “great, sweet and gorgeous guy” and then next scene shows their
first meeting. After this movie comes back to present where Nick and Margo are
playing board game and then the phone rings with Nick’s neighbor (Walt) on the
line, Margo picks up the phone. Walt asks for Nick and tells him that the door of
his house is open and his cat is roaming outside. Nick reaches his house and
searches for Amy, he couldn’t find her and calls the police, detective Rhonda
Boney and officer James Gilpin. Now to understand this movie, I will put the
events of movie in chronological order.

In 2005, Amy meets Nick for the first time ant they date for two years. In this two
years, Amy tells Nick that she is Amazing Amy (book) which her parents wrote
telling how perfect of a child she is. But Amy tells Nick that her parents have
converted what she didn’t get in her life into events of success in the book. Mainly,
she was seen as perfect by everyone, which she wasn’t making her frustrated
inside. After two years, Amy and Nick get married and start living in an apartment
in New York City but soon they lose their jobs as writers and start having financial
issues. On top of that, Nick’s mother is diagnosed with breast cancer (stage 4) for
which they move to Missouri. Amy mentions in her diary about she didn’t mind
moving to Missouri but she wished that Nick had asked, she says that Nick is
happy to be home but she feels that Nick loaded her by mistake (she feels
cornered). They couldn’t save Nick’s mother and Amy uses her last trust money to
buy Nick a bar. They start having fights so to save their marriage, Nick asks Amy
for a child but she refuses it. He went to a fertility center but she didn’t do her part.
Eventually, Nick losses interest in her and starts an affair with his former student,
Andie. Amy finds out that he is cheating thinking how Nick took her pride, dignity,
hope and money and decides to take revenge on him as he completely ruined her
life. She starts planning her apparent murder from one year. She watches crime
shows, reads book on how to plan a successful murder and comes up with a plan.
Firstly, she befriends a pregnant lady, Noelle, from neighborhood and fills her up
about Nick’s abuse and his violent nature towards Amy. Noelle and Amy hand out
together and Amy tries to gets enough evidence to prove her friendship with her.
She then has to make sure that people mourn her loss and she finds out that
Americans love pregnant women. Now, Amy thinks to make people love her and
connect with her, sympathize for her, she invites Noelle to her house and steals her
urine to send them for testing to make sure she is pregnant on legal medical
records. Secondly, she starts creating money problems from online gambling,
buying expensive items and lastly she bumps the life insurance to $1.2 million. She
then buys a generic, cheap getaway care and pays in cash as it will be noticed if
she bought with card. She also creates diary from a year which contains some true
contents from their initial days when they (Amy and Nick) fell in love and were
happy together but she then fills false information about how Nick becomes
violent, start abusing her and did not want the child. At the end she writes, that
how Nick sees her she thinks that he may kill her. Now on 5th July, in the morning
when Nick was going to ask Amy for divorce just then she asks him to go and
think about their marriage. Nick goes to the beach and then she sets up the house
with crime scene for her own assault with enough mistakes to raise the doubt.
Destroyed furniture, her blood splatter, a lot of her blood on her floor like a crime
scene, then cleans it poorly just how Nick will clean it and then she leaves murder
weapon with her blood and burns it in fireplace. She leaves a trail of clues like
usually she does on their anniversaries, but this time it is to frame Nick.

Now, back to when Nick calls the detective and officer to his house because he
can’t find Amy. Detective Rhonda and Officer James when start investigating the
house they find 1st clue left by Amy, they ask Nick for his help to solve the clue.
They follow the clue which leads them to the second one, being in Nick’s office.
The second clue leads to the little brown house which was owned by Nick’s father.
Nick reaches there first and takes the third clue and hides it from detective as he
doesn’t like where the clue is leading. To find out Amy, there is a press conference
held by the police where Amy’s parents ask the people to help them and share a
helpline number. Leading to that, there is a vigil held for Amy where Noelle shouts
in front of people that Nick killed her pregnant wife Amy. On previous night
before the vigil, Nick’s girlfriend came to meet him at Margo’s house. In the
morning when she was leaving the house, Margo catches Nick read handed.
Detective Rhonda then turns against Nick and start questioning him about
purchases made on Amy’s debit card and the bump in the insurance. Then, only
records come that Amy was pregnant, Nick asks detective that he will only answer
with his lawyer. After they leave, Nick solves last clue which is wooden outhouse
at Margo’s house where there are all the purchases (expensive items) made by
Amy on her card acting as evidence against Nick for planning Amy’s murder. In
the meantime, the detective solves the clue two and goes to Nick’s dad’s house and
finds Amy’s diary in a burnt state (just the right amount). Nick tells everything to
Margo that how Amy has planned everything to accuse him for her murder and in
the next morning leaves for New York to meet Tanner Bolt (a lawyer popularly
known for representing men who were accused of killing their wives).

The movie goes to show what Amy is doing. On 5th July, when she disappeared,
she drives to a compound in Ozarks with the car she bought. She says that when
Nick is sentenced to death, she will go in river and drown herself to make everyone
believe that Nick killed his “beautiful, pregnant wife and dumps her like an
inconvenient garbage”. He meets with Tanner and he asks Nick to meet Amy’s
two ex boyfriend, Tommy O’ Hara (Amy had falsely accused him for rape by
planting evidence around his house) and Desi Collings (against whom Amy had
filed restraining order), he meets them and then comes back to Missouri. Amy calls
from Ozarks to the Missouri police telling them about the wooden outhouse. After
staying in Ozarks for five days, Amy gets mugged up by two people living in the
neighborhood of trailer park she is staying. She has no money, no place to stay
which only gives her option to call Desi, who is still madly in love with her, for
help. She tells him how Nick used to abuse her and she ran from the house to save
herself from Nick, Desi believes her and takes her to his bootylicious uber-cool
pad with automated appliance and surveillance recordings. In the meantime, Nick
decides to do an interview with Sharon Schieber and tell everyone about Andie and
his affair before Andie expose it. Right before his interview, Andie makes a public
statement about her relationship with Nick and she apologizes to everyone. In spite
of this, Nick does the interview with Sharon and admits that he needs to be hated
by everyone for his cheating self, admits that he was not able to perform his
responsibilities as a husband but he is really guilty of himself and wants his love,
Amy back in his life. After the interview is aired, Nick’s image is gets better with
the fake act that he puts up. When Amy listen the interview at Desi’s house, she
wants to go back to her house but Desi asks her to stay with him in the villa. In the
meantime, all evidences are collected by detective Rhonda including all those
expensive items, she arrests Nick for murdering her wife but he gets bail by his
lawyer. On the other side, Amy is planning to escape from the house. When Desi
goes to his office, Amy preps a surveillance video with her bleeding and crying
lying at the door of the house. She uses wine to show her bleeding in the video, she
preps her wrists with tie marks with rope. When Desi comes back in the evening,
she seduces him and takes him to the bedroom where she slits his throat. In the
morning when Nick is out on bail, Amy comes home covered in Desi’s blood and
she falls in Nick’s arm in front of the media. She gives statement to FBI and local
task force how she had been kidnapped in Desi’s house for this whole period of
time. She tells them that Desi used to rape her, abuse her but in the end she kills
him for self defense and came back. Detective Rhonda tries to question her but she
shuts her up as Rhonda almost had Nick heading towards death sentence. She asks
FBI to check the surveillance video for proof. Later she confesses to Nick in the
shower how she planned all this. Nick was going to expose her on national
television but just before the shoot, she tells him that she is pregnant with his child.
Nick feeling his responsibility towards the child stops himself from exposing Amy
and plays a loving husband in interview, in the end disclosing they are expecting a
child. The movie ends with again Nick stroking Amy’s hair and thinking about
what she is thinking inside her head.

CHARACTERIZATION
 NICK DUNNE: The main lead of the movie. He is former writer and
owns a bar around the corner of city after losing his job. He was a
Missourian where he lived with his abusive, misogynist father and mentally-
ill mother. He moves back to Missouri with his wife from New York for
treatment of his mother who is suffering from breast cancer. He is suffering
from feelings of failure and inadequacy, he is haunted by his parents
 unhappy marriage and is disappointed with his own. Nick ends ups saying
wrong things at wrong place which cause him a lot of trouble during the
investigation. But in the end, he becomes much better at keeping secrets,
lying and scheming.
 AMY ELLIOT DUNNE: She was the only child of her two child
psychologists. She was famous from childhood through the popular children
book Amazing Amy. She is incredibly deceitful, manipulative and
intelligent, capable of violence and lying and appears to feel little remorse or
compassion. She can develop complex plans and situations and carry them
out successfully to get what she wants and take revenge.
 DESI COLLINGS: Ex- boyfriend of Amy, went to the same school as
Amy and was deeply in love with her. According to Amy, he was obsessed
with her, stalked her that she had to file a restraining order against him but in
reality she manipulated him. He was planning for their reunion from many
years but when he becomes too controlling after Amy moves into his lake
house, she seduces him and kills him.
 TANNER BOLT: A high fly attorney famous for saving men who are
accused for killing their wives. When Nick recognizes that he is going to be
charged for killing Amy, he finally hires him. When Nick tells him about
what Amy has planned he did not believes him but after a period of time he
believes him and helps him to restore his reputation.
 MARGO GO DUNNE: Twin sister of Nick, whose career in New York
did not work and she returned to Missouri. She works with Nick in the bar.
She did not like Amy from starting. During the investigation, she is really
supportive of Nick but when she finds out his affair, she has doubts about
his innocence. But in the end, she believes Nick and the truth that Amy is
framing him for her murder.
 DETECTIVE RHONDA BONEY: She is in charge of Amy’s
disappearance case. She is first lenient with Nick and she becomes more
suspicious of him after knowing all the evidences that were against him. In
the end, she connects all the evidences and arrests Nick but when Amy
shows up, she becomes suspicious of Amy and she believes that Nick is
innocent.
 OFFICER JAMES GILPIN: He is detective Rhonda’s partner in case
of Amy’s disappearance. He is suspicious of Nick from the starting and
wants to find out what role he might have played in disappearance of his
wife.
 ANDIE FITZGREALD: She is a twenty three old college student and
also a student of Nick. She used to take writing classes of Nick in
community college and subsequently became his mistress.
 NOELLE HAWTHORNE: Neighbor of Amy and Nick in Missouri.
She considers herself as Amy’s best friend but actually Amy has staged the
friendship and also stole her urine to fake her pregnancy.
 MARYBETH and RAND ELLIOT: They are Amy’s parents,
wealthy child psychologists. They have high expectations from Amy from
her childhood itself. They co-author a children book about a character
Amazing Amy where they had depicted Amy with all the talents which she
didn’t have.
THEMES
 PARENTING: Both Amy and Nick had gone through rough parenting.
We see that Nick had a misogynist father who used to abuse him as well as
his mother. On the other side, Amy’s parent were loving on the surface but
they were demanding enough to make Amy realize she is not good enough.
When Nick comes to know that Amy is pregnant, he don’t want to leave his
child’s control with Amy and is ready to take his responsibility as a parent
because he knows how destructive a bad parenting can be.
 DISHONESTY: During the entire movie, the characters lie to each other
and to the audience as well. Starting from the movie, disappearance of Amy
itself is a perfect example of dishonesty. Nick also lies about her affair to
Amy as well as other individuals. The theme of dishonesty is mostly striking
and disturbing because marriage is based on trust but we see that Amy and
Nick lie to each other constantly.
 MANIPULATION: Amy not only lies in the whole movie but also make
strategic predictions about how people will behave on her plan and control
their behaviors. She uses her knowledge of psychology well and people
believe her because she is beautiful and charismatic. In the end, Nick also
 successfully manipulates Amy for bringing her back home by fake showing
on the show.
 MISOGYNY: Hatred of women, an important theme in the movie. Nick’s
father shows this personality, he distrusts all the women. Nick has always
been afraid that he will turn out in his father’s way but tries to cultivate
positive relationship with women. When he sees what Amy has done to him
and what she is capable of, he again thinks about the cunningness and
deceitfulness of women.
CONCLUSION
This movie has many sides, one has to know every side to completely understand
the story as well as to know what is the truth behind the story. Also, it appears that
every marriage is way more than complex than it actually looks like, it can look
like a perfect marriage in public but inside the house, privately it may display a
complete opposite of perfect. One should not change himself/herself just for
someone to like him/her. They should be their themselves because after sometime
they may go insane to act differently in front of their partners.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 “Gone Girl (2014) : Movie Plot Holes Explained.” This Is Barry, 22 Dec. 2018,
www.thisisbarry.com/film/gone-girl-2014-movie-plot-holes-explained/
 Flynn, Gillian, et al. “Gone Girl Characters.” GradeSaver, www.gradesaver.com/gone-
girl/study-guide/character-list
 Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. Reprint, Crown, 2014