A third preda­tor in these woods: Gone Girl at 10

Slow­ly, the closed door hid­ing per­pe­tra­tors of domes­tic vio­lence and abuse away from pry­ing eyes is creak­ing open. In 2017, the #MeToo move­ment empow­ered women (and men) across the world to speak out against their abusers. In 2024, the man ver­sus bear dia­logue ignit­ed intense debate in near­ly every cor­ner of the Inter­net. These viral moments – among count­less oth­ers – gave voice to the silent social com­pact so many women are raised to under­stand: Love and vio­lence rarely exist on oppo­site sides of the continuum.

It’s an emerg­ing dia­logue, spurred on by new media chal­leng­ing the shame and silence that bloom in the wake of inti­mate vio­lence. Trace those threads of con­ver­sa­tion back a decade: Before post­ing #MeToo or choos­ing the bear, there was your stance on David Finch’s 2014 Gone Girl.

Fol­low­ing Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) through the (lit­er­al) sac­cha­rine ori­gins of their pic­turesque rela­tion­ship, the film retraces the slow death of their mar­riage to reveal the dan­ger we open our­selves up to when enter­ing such fraught compacts.

The sto­ry of Nick and Amy unfurls grad­u­al­ly. Scenes of the present – as Nick comes to grips with Amy’s dis­ap­pear­ance and his grow­ing com­plic­i­ty in it – entwine with scenes of the past, each nar­rat­ed by an entry from Amy’s diary. In this way, view­ers are intro­duced to a care­free young cou­ple that promis­es nev­er to be like ​“every oth­er cou­ple [they] know.” Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, it jux­ta­pos­es this naïve promise with an old­er ver­sion of Nick and Amy, a cou­ple that has become just that: unhap­py, at odds, and vio­lent­ly so.

Here, Amy is the film’s authoress. Her entries peel back lay­ers of esca­la­tion, evolv­ing from love and respect to the dis­re­spect and deper­son­al­iza­tion that cul­mi­nate in phys­i­cal abuse. For many, hers is a famil­iar, well-trod path.

That’s pre­cise­ly how it’s meant to feel. Just over an hour into the film, this expect­ed arc grinds to a halt: What hap­pens is not the grad­u­a­tion from spousal abuse to mur­der – it’s the grad­u­a­tion from prey to predator.

From her non­de­script get­away car, Amy smug­ly con­fess­es the truth: All of it, from those ear­ly, per­fect sto­ries to the lat­er, grip­ping admis­sions of a rela­tion­ship gone wrong, is his­to­ry rewrit­ten. Her diary was no archival endeav­or; it is instead a mod­ern retelling, venge­ful­ly record­ed in response to her husband’s affair.

This diary has one pur­pose: To cre­ate a believ­able record that lures observers into mak­ing assump­tions, draw­ing con­clu­sions, and fram­ing Nick for Amy’s death. These diary entries are torn direct­ly from the pages of Flynn’s nov­el, yet they are all the more impact­ful for the inti­ma­cy and imme­di­a­cy that emerges through the act of viewing.

Watch­ing Amy’s grad­ual reduc­tion intro­duces a cer­tain air of voyeuris­tic com­plic­i­ty. View­ers become cul­pa­ble in her degra­da­tion sim­ply because they have stepped behind closed doors to bear wit­ness. It’s pre­cise­ly because they have borne wit­ness – see­ing events unfold before their eyes – that doubt nev­er tru­ly enters the pic­ture. Guilt and pre­sump­tion: The film intro­duces these two pow­er­ful forces, each of which draws fur­ther into ques­tion the line between sto­ry and reality.

A veil of uncer­tain­ty falls over events. Pieces of Amy’s sto­ry – Nick’s resent­ment and dis­tance, the fray­ing threads that once bound them togeth­er – have been sub­stan­ti­at­ed else­where. Oth­ers have not. The view­er, then, must decide where fic­tion meets fact.

So while Nick and Amy’s is a shared anni­hi­la­tion, each com­plic­it in their own (if unequal) ways, it is far eas­i­er to for­give Amy and accept her sto­ry, which feels too raw to dis­miss entire­ly. The rea­son for this blind faith is dis­turbing­ly sim­ple: Amy’s sto­ry is ubiq­ui­tous. Her words, spat out in the throes of a rec­og­niz­able rage, resonate:

“Nick Dunne took my pride and my dig­ni­ty and my hope and my mon­ey. He took and took from me until I no longer exist­ed. That’s mur­der. Let the pun­ish­ment fit the crime.”

Per­haps Amy’s diary is man­u­fac­tured, writ­ten in the venge­ful script of a woman scorned for the final time. Per­haps her words are not to be trust­ed. What is true, how­ev­er, is the core of her griev­ance: Her mar­riage was a death by a thou­sand cuts.

It is this grad­ual dimin­ish­ment so many women fear. Mar­i­tal rape, finan­cial abuse, weaponized incom­pe­tence, and unbal­anced men­tal loads – what is a maul­ing in the face of such utter destruc­tion?
Gone Girl answers this ques­tion with anoth­er: Why not return the favor?

Amy Dunne is no lamb to the slaugh­ter. Nei­ther man nor bear, she is a third preda­tor in the woods, com­plete with a set of claws and an oh-so-pret­ty head full of cun­ning plans to see jus­tice served. While her actions are ampli­fied for the­atri­cal effect, they nonethe­less illus­trate that one needn’t always bow to the blade.

This air of right­eous­ness makes Amy unbe­liev­ably dif­fi­cult to con­demn, no more so than in the case of her long-time stalk­er, Desi Collings (Neal Patrick Har­ris), whom she turns to when her care­ful­ly laid plans falter.

Yet, Desi offers only a brief respite. From his lux­u­ri­ous, remote home, he half-heart­ed­ly hides his inten­tions beneath a veil of faked con­cern – a mask that falls away the instant he tells her: ​“I won’t force myself on you.” The sub­se­quent threat, ​“unless you make me,” echoes between them, unspo­ken.
With Desi, Amy dons her truest form: a wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing, well-versed in the art of expec­ta­tion. Chameleon-like, the preda­tor lurks just beneath the sur­face of her lacy blue night­gown, fresh­ly waxed legs, and ​“cool girl” façade donned to dis­tract and disorient.

Amy’s abil­i­ty to switch on the ver­sion of her­self Desi desires may seem more like a defence mech­a­nism than an instru­ment of vio­lence. Yet, it is ulti­mate­ly effec­tive, lead­ing him to meet his fate where he least expects it: at the hands of the woman he thought he caged.

Gone Girl does not ask view­ers whether Amy is right or wrong. Instead, it asks them to con­sid­er why she behaves the way she does, and how she is so deft at doing so. Vio­lence, it tells us, is syn­ony­mous with love. The anni­hi­la­tion of self, replaced by a ver­sion of ​“cool girl” tai­lor-made to suit the male gaze, is a par­ty trick learned at a young age. But ​“cool girl” doesn’t need to be a cage. For Amy, it is a weapon to be wield­ed at will – a tool of past vic­tim­iza­tion reshaped into the key to freedom.

As Gone Girl turns ten, know this: See­ing Amy as vin­di­cat­ed is dif­fer­ent from con­don­ing her actions. In fact, they are two entire­ly dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tions. Amy may very well be a psy­chopath, but she is also a sym­bol in an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion about female agency and the way it is sti­fled and extin­guished in rela­tion­ships with men. She’s a per­verse com­fort, con­firm­ing that while gen­dered vio­lence is still to be expect­ed, one need no longer see one­self as prey and prey alone.