Gone Girl

[sonetka]

Before starting, let it be known that today is the ninety-second anniversary of W.W. Sterrett's unsolved murder by arsenical wedding cake, which I wrote a post about here. As I recently edited it to include what happened to his wife, which I didn't know at the time I wrote it last year, I think this justifies linking to it again. Short version of

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

I have neither read nor seen Gone Girl and you are not encouraging me to! But your reasoning sounds very sound. It isn't that in the present day you can't account for characters not having a mobile phone on etc. In real life it happens all the time. But it has to be plausible for the character and situation in question, and it doesn't sound as if that was - I would assume for a start that basic checks on phone and finance records were a default in this sort of situation. The narrative at least has to say "He always spent Sunday mornings in bed with a hangover".

People certainly love to put pretty white girls on pedestals, but one thing they love almost as much is knocking them off again.

See the ongoing Kate and Gerry McCann saga, in which tabloids have been swinging from one side to the other weekly for years.

[sonetka]

The thing is, I really did enjoy the movie; it was one of those things where everyone involved is a horrible person, including the husband, but the fact is that he's being set up by the wife for something he didn't do (she's angry at him for moving her out to the sticks, ignoring her, and screwing around, so she makes sure to stage things carefully in a way that makes him look very suspect). It had some great moments satirizing the weird semi-celebrity culture surrounding famous crimes -- the husband's sister is despairing over internet commenters who are pronouncing him guilty because he smiled in a photograph, the Nancy Grace lookalike TV host who loves convicting people on not much more evidence than "he acted really strange", people trying to take selfies with him, people at the candlelight vigil who are obviously there more for the drama and the cameras than because they give a damn about the missing woman ... I think that's why I was so disappointed by the ending, because it started off so well. To summarize quickly: Amy's plan