You don't know my kind.....You don't my mind.....Dark necessities are part of my design.....
http://variety.com/2017/film/festiva...ng-1202570269/
The Year of Stephen King continues apace with the arrival of “Gerald’s Game,” one of two Netflix-produced King adaptations (along with “1922”) unveiled last weekend at Austin’s genre-skewing Fantastic Fest. But here’s the rub: It’s entirely possible that this particular adaptation may be best appreciated — or, to paraphrase the late George Michael, viewed without prejudice — by people who have never read King’s 1992 bestseller of the same title.
Writer-director Mike Flanagan (“Ouija: Origin of Evil”) and co-writer Jeff Howard have proficiently streamlined and simplified a novel that, according to the production notes, even Flanagan once considered “unfilmable.” But the end result of their reimagining might very well produce more complaints than usual from disapproving King fans that, really, the book was a lot better.
To be fair, the movie tends to adhere quite effectively to the bare bones of King’s original plot. At a secluded lake house — the kind of place where no one in the surrounding area can hear you scream — Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) are squabbling about whether they should continue a kinky sex game when Gerald inconveniently expires.
Unfortunately, this leaves Jessie handcuffed to their bed, unable to free herself, increasingly frantic and dehydrated, and haunted by voices inside her head that sound more hectoring than helpful. Even more unfortunately, a famished abandoned dog wanders into the lake house through an open door, feasts on Gerald’s corpse and gradually expresses an appetite for fresher meat.
And oh, by the way, Jessie is visited by a gruesome stranger who may be a hallucination “made of moonlight,” or something much, much worse.
Right from the start, Flanagan and Howard put their own spin on the material by making Jessie far less culpable for her husband’s untimely demise, cleverly implying that Gerald died of a heart attack because he popped one too many little blue pills before playtime. But that is a relatively minor adjustment compared to what could be a deal-breaker for fans of the novel: Instead of having the voices inside Jessie’s head belong to people from her past, or manifestations of her own tortured psyche, the movie has the shackled heroine encouraged and harassed by two on-screen supporting characters: the unquiet spirit of Gerald (who’s understandably upset that the dog is treating his corpse as a blue-plate special) and a vividly imagined, no-B.S. version of Jessie herself.
Think of it this way: King’s novel could be done as a radio play (much like Lindsay Crouse’s exceptional audiobook performance of “Gerald’s Game”), while the film adaptation could, with only minor tinkering and excisions, be reconstituted as a stage play (much like the recent Broadway incarnation of King’s “Misery”).
Taken strictly on its own terms, the film adaptation is an arrestingly and sometimes excruciatingly suspenseful psychological thriller lightly garnished with horror-movie flourishes — including one especially squirm-inducing instance of copious bloodletting — and driven by a compelling lead performance that is entirely worthy of a description too often misapplied to lesser work: tour de force.
Gugino adroitly intertwines varying threads of panic, rage, resentment, gallows humor and long-simmering resentment while Jessie struggles to remain sane, or least tightly focused, while pulling double duty: anxiously searching for any means of escape, and reluctantly taking stock of the life she has lived, as well as the emotions she has repressed, up to the moment Gerald clicked on the cuffs.
Flanagan and Howard do not always display a light touch when it comes to stressing symbolism, Freudian and otherwise, but Gugino imparts compelling emotional truth into scenes that suggest (and, near the end, bluntly announce) that Jessie was shackled long before reaching the lake house, by her marriage and acquiescence to Gerald and, years earlier, by suppressed memories of sexual violation. As a result, she now has more than one set of chains to break.
Chiara Aurelia is affectingly credible as the 12-year-old Jessie, who appears in flashbacks and elsewhere. And Henry Thomas remains nimbly poised on a knife edge between manipulative predator and self-loathing weakling as Jessie’s father, arguably his meatiest role since he was cast as a dying but defiant Hank Williams in 2011’s “The Last Ride.”
But Bruce Greenwood is the one who emerges as the movie’s most valuable supporting player, playing Gerald as a sly S.O.B. who is by turns shockingly witty, appallingly misogynistic and unflappably condescending while engaged in posthumous wordplay with Jessie and her tougher-talking doppelganger.
Credit cinematographer Michael Fimognari and production designer Patrick M. Sullivan Jr. for enhancing the claustrophobic feel of scenes inside the lake-house bedroom. It must be acknowledged that, during these scenes, Gugino looks very attractive in the slinky silk slip that Maddie purchased as suitable attire for sexual hijinks. But it must also be acknowledged that the filmmakers utilize that purchase as a plant that pays off in an ingeniously nerve-wracking sequence that even Alfred Hitchcock might have envied.
Just finished watching and yeah it's a decent horror film. Some hard parts to watch. Surprised I'm the first one to mention it now that it's available, kinda thought you guys would have watched it earlier today. Get to it, it's good.
"That which you think, becomes your world" Matheson
Gerald's Game
3 out of 5.
Entertaining throughout, didn't like the epilogue, and while most of the "inner dialogue" was good, it was utilized a little too much.
I thought that it would worst! It's actually not too bad of a movie.
I still think that the end of the book shouldnt have been including in the novel, and steve shouldnt have "explained" the space cowboy...
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CLUB STEPHEN KING (french website about STEPHEN KING, since 1992) : on : Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
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I really liked it. Some King references I noticed...
spoiler
I hope Flanagan gets to do more King adaptations.
I liked it a lot, but the last five or ten minutes dragged a lot of the life out of it. Sometimes it's better not to follow the novel so closely. I was impressed by Greenwood -- man, he sure sold that heart attack. I especially liked his soliloquy late in the movie -- at least four minutes in a single take. That famous scene was really hard to watch.
Author of The Road to the Dark Tower, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences and The Dark Tower Companion. Co-editor with Stephen King of the anthology Flight or Fright.
I enjoyed it as well.
You don't know my kind.....You don't my mind.....Dark necessities are part of my design.....
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CLUB STEPHEN KING (french website about STEPHEN KING, since 1992) : on : Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
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Author of The Road to the Dark Tower, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences and The Dark Tower Companion. Co-editor with Stephen King of the anthology Flight or Fright.
I watched the movie last night and thought it was really good. I was amazed that Stephen King managed to pull off and incredible story while the antagonist was handcuffed to a bed the entire time and I was as equally impressed over how well they did a movie based off the book.
Just seen it a minute ago - and I really liked it! Was a straight 8/10 cabin in the woods movie - great!
I didn't knew the book yet , that's probably the thing.
I seriously expected
spoiler
Only thing I true did not get was
spoiler
Anyhow refreshing popcorn entertainment - would love to see more king/Netflix productions
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With all the talk about It galvanizing Stephen King adaptations, it’s kinda criminal that Gerald’s Game—a novel that many thought to be unfilmable unless it was through the twisted eyes of Lars von Trier—isn’t going to be getting the same rapturous attention. Because I think it’s a much more herculean effort to take a novel about a bondage session gone horribly wrong and make it work so well . . . and I think that while It is still powerfully effective, its ambition is somewhat undercut by the fact that they could only tell so much in a two-plus-hour runtime and hence had to leave so much on the cutting room floor, sacrificing characterization and world-building in order to compartmentalize the story into a single serving. But with a more modest (in length, if certainly not in content) story like Gerald’s Game, there’s more than enough time for director Mike Flanagan to take his time ratcheting up the tension . . . and boy, does he.
Carla Gugino gives the performance of her career as a stricken woman in one of the most horrifically desperate situations any person can possibly imagine, and for a film that essentially fixes her in one spot a la Buried and 127 Hours, it pretty much becomes a showcase for Gugino. If there were any justice (and if Netflix were willing to put their weight behind it), Gugino would be a contender for Best Actress.
Even though Gerald’s Game is primarily a one-woman showcase, Gugino doesn’t have to do all the work herself. There is a nice supporting ensemble to backstop her, particularly Bruce Greenwood in the titular role. Greenwood is often a reliable figure to have in your films, but I believe that this is the most I’ve ever liked him. Henry Thomas and Carel Struycken also make strong (if sickening) impacts in their brief screentime. But really, this is the Carla Gugino show, and she makes it more than worth the watch.
I can understand the criticisms of the film's last ten or so minutes, and I agree with Bev that it's perhaps best to not hew so closely to the source material when said source material ends in epistolary format, I think it still worked.
(P.S. As a huge King fan, love that they actually dropped references to Dolores Claiborne, Cujo and The Dark Tower in this.)
"I aim to misbehave."
-- Malcolm Reynolds
"I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-- Hoban Washburne
"What does that make us?"
"Big damn heroes, sir."
"Ain't we just."
-- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne
I think there was a noticeable reference to Dolores Claiborne. The "all things serve the beam" also was a DT reference.
Does this have any actual nudity? I may watch it with my kids, but...
You can't be aloof until you advertise.
Not sure how that matters. It does include numerous saying of the word "cunt", and obvious molestation of a young woman; and adds a bit of "degloving", but don't worry, nary a woman's breast will be seen.
It should be rated R, but of course the C word, and degloving are all cool things for kids to hear/see.
God help us if a woman's breast were exposed (they aren't).
Mmmmm...degloving.
Pork rinds anyone?
All that's left of what we were is what we have become.
This is great: Netflix Employees React To... That Gerald's Game Scene
Author of The Road to the Dark Tower, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences and The Dark Tower Companion. Co-editor with Stephen King of the anthology Flight or Fright.
Those reactions were GREAT!!!
John