And to think that I nearly watched The Country Bears tonight!!! Wow, when this movie ended I felt the smallest grin just spread across my face because of how great this movie was!  I actually loved it a whole lot more than I was expecting.  Going into this movie I thought I knew a major spoiler that would ruin the movie for me; luckily, that spoiler turned out to be less of a spoiler and more of a plot point, so I found myself able to wholeheartedly enjoy the plot line while being surprised by the ending.  This whole movie was such a long trip but it was fantastic.  It made 149 minutes feel like only an hour and a half.  Before I even get to the rest of the review I will say right now that this is a movie you should watch, I would also be careful in researching it because I think half the fun of this movie is just watching it unfold.

One of the first things I noticed about this movie was the incredible score!  While listening to it I quickly knew that this score is one that will be added to my “Favorite Score” playlist.  The simple, almost minimalistic score helps elevate each scene without taking away from the dramatic tension.  Each time the theme would repeat I would feel myself being drawn in by the simple charm.  To put it simply, the score made me want to walk mysteriously around my house and coldly stair out windows on an overcast day.  Another fantastic element to this movie was the performances!  I loved Rosamund Pike in Pride and Prejudice, and I had been meaning to watch this film and explore some of her other performances.  For the first 10 minutes or so of this movie I thought her performance was a little stilted and I wasn’t feeling her accent.  As the movie went on I realized it perfectly encapsulated Amy and when paired with the theme it helped create such a unique aura around her character.  I’m personally not a Ben Affleck fan.  I’ve never really been interested in his acting and personally I find him bland; however, that was perfect for this movie and I think his “lack of charm” in real life, played into his intended “lack of charm” in this movie.  I felt that the pair had chemistry when needed and had even better chemistry in other moments.

The story was extremely fascinating.  Typically going into a movie that I know so much about from the get-go, I will feel like I’ve already seen it.  This was absolutely not the case!  There was so much that I was not expecting, yet at the same time made perfect sense for where the story was heading.  The entire move made me even more excited to pick up the book.  I look forward to checking out more of Gillian Flynn’s work because of how much I loved this story.  I wouldn’t be able to write an accurate review of this movie without mentioning the directing, it was absolutely incredible in my opinion.  No scene felt out of place, everything fit so perfectly together.  I think this overtakes The Social Network as my favorite Fincher movie.  I would say that my only gripe towards the movie is that there were a few lines that felt unrealistic.  Some of the lines were most likely stylistically added to emphasize the disjointed-ness of their reality.  Other lines like a character using the acronym, “WTF” out loud instead of just swearing normally, felt a little cheesy and a little bit too produced.  Those moments were so extremely small and random that it really didn’t affect my opinion of the movie as a whole.

As I mentioned earlier, I would highly recommend giving this a watch if you haven’t yet seen it.  It was a great way to spend my night, and it made folding my laundry 10X more interesting than if I were to have watched The Country Bears!  I’ll say it again, I am highly impressed by this movie and I really look forward to giving it a rewatch to see if I potentially hyped it up too much or if it really is that good!  As always, if you give this movie a shot I hope you like it as much as I did!