50,000,000 shades darker.
Be advised of some spoilers ahead.
There is an old trick, or so the movies tell us, to putting someone through torture. It’s not enough to simply hurt them, you have to show them exactly what you’re going to do to them first. You have to hint at the danger that is to come. A knife cuts in an instant. Waiting for that fateful moment when it finally slices you is, arguably, even worse.
Mike Flanagan understands this premise all too well. The opening scenes of his new film Gerald’s Game, based on the novel by Stephen King, lay out all the film’s implements with elegant cruelty. The packed suitcase, lingerie inside. The other packed suitcase, don’t forget the handcuffs. The long winding drive to a lonely little cabin. A mangy, hungry dog. A door left open. A little bottle of viagra.
This perfect storm of bad timing and lousy circumstance finds Jessie (Carla Gugino) handcuffed to a bed by her husband, Gerald (Bruce Greenwood). Things were going so well, then they were going so badly, and then they go so badly that Gerald has a heart attack and dies, with Jessie still handcuffed to the bed. Alone. Barely able to move. No one around. No neighbors. No phone. No water. Only Jessie, the corpse of her husband, and oh look! That hungry dog.
What an exquisitely Hitchcockian nightmare scenario we have in Gerald’s Game. But of course, these kind of gimmicks have been disappointing before. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in showmanship and forget that however weird the situation is, a movie is still a story, and the story needs to be told, not just shown off. Too many filmmakers yell “Look, ma! Watch me dive!” and then bellyflop it.
Fortunately, Mike Flanagan is evolving into an incredibly classy filmmaker. Gerald’s Game is a malignant escape room movie, a sort of LucasArts point-and-click scenario where every tool at Jessie’s disposal must to be used to ensure her survival, and not necessarily for the purpose they were originally intended. Her solutions are clever, whether or not you figure them out before she does.
But those are just nuts and bolts. What they build is a dramatic scenario in which Jessie, going very quickly out of her mind, must rummage through her whole life and summon not just the will to live, but the right way to do so. With the aid of her dead husband, who won’t stop talking to her, and a liberated version of herself, Jessie watches her life very slowly flash in front of her eyes, coming to terms with who she has been, what she became, and what she needs to become right now, before she dies.
Gerald’s Game knows when to trap us on the bed with Jessie, and when to walk around inside her awful past. The film glides from chilling to cheeky almost effortlessly, earning its dramatic revelations. Even when Gerald’s Game seems to go off the rails for a few scenes, right towards the end, we discover that this was all part of a greater design. Without those moments, without that dialogue, without that reveal, as surprising as it seems, the movie would have meant much less.
The Verdict
Gerald’s Game is a set of tightly wound gears that cranks out dread. Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood are as superb as they have ever been, relishing in the opportunity to ask and answer all the big and little questions about Jessie, within the confines of an exquisite, simple, torturously suspenseful thriller.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire