WARNING: EXPECT FULL SPOILERS FOR GONE GIRL Warning over (It’s better to be safe than sorry). Now, I always write this before my reviews, but I will try to steer clear of any spoilers – though, that may be tough with this film – we’ll see how I do.

Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher, stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as the Dunnes. Affleck, Nick Dunne, is introduced right away – and is really the main character in this film. With that having been said, Rosamund Pike’s character, Amy Dunne, is essential to the plot of the film – I’ll leave it at that for now. The plot revolves around Amy having disappeared – presumably killed, or at the very least kidnapped. What follows is a witchhunt – not unlike the one seen in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt. While this film may look like the simple ‘whodunnit’ tale, it is actually quite unique – and some twists and turns will leave you speechless. That’s the plot, really, but in getting into a review – I’d first like to talk about David Fincher.

Fincher has taken this adapted screenplay and has taken it through the Fincher-process. Fincher is one of the best directors out there, and this film is like every other film he’s attached to. It’s beautiful, it’s on-point – it is David Fincher. One of the things I worried about was the casting, though. Tyler Perry & Neil Patrick Harris seemed like odd choices for their particularly roles as Nick’s lawyer and Amy’s old ‘stalker-boyfriend’, respectively. Really, though, Perry does quite well – and NPH does fine too – however, I’ve not read the novel yet, and I’m curious to find out whether NPH’s portrayal is true to the book.

I like to compare Affleck’s Nick Dunne to Mads Mikkelsen’s Lucas in The Hunt, and the thing is – that while both characters are being chased, or rather speculated upon, their reactions are quite dissimilar. Lucas was angry, but mostly you felt sorry for him – you saw him contemplating his future, you saw people becoming violent towards him. Now, Nick Dunne is a different person – he’s aggressive, he’s angry – but he’s being told to calm down; to fit in. The thing is that he’s too calm, he’s too awkward at media events following the supposed kidnapping of his wife. Affleck does well, but I do think Mikkelsen’s acting performance is superior. The star performance in Gone Girl, comes from Rosamund Pike. She has an Academy-Award-Performance, and it might be tough to understand this if you haven’t seen the film, but her performance is stellar.

The plot is amazing – its twists and turns are mindboggling – and when you combine that with the amazing directorial qualities of Fincher – you get something amazing. Go see this film – not only because of the Oscar-potential of Pike, or the directorial performance of Fincher – but for the twists, the turns, the whodunit of it all. It’s an instant classic in that category.

Overall Score: 9.0 out of 10. Amazing performances – both in front of the camera and behind it – take you on a ride as this terrifying witchhunt transforms itself into something legendary for the whodunit-genre.