Gerald’s Game

Romessa Nadeem
Oct 18, 2017
3 min read

Rating: 8/10

Directed by Mark Flanagan

Starring :

Carla Gugino as Jessie Burlingame

Bruce Greenwood as Gerald Burlingame

Released on September 29th, Gerald’s Game has a simple premise, yet it turns out to be anything but simple. Most thriller films involve someone being chased by a maniac with a knife or machete. The hero hides, crawls and runs through some forest or a hidden house somewhere. Here though, it’s as simple as “how do you escape when you’re literally chained to a bed?”

That’s the predicament our protagonist, Jessie, finds herself in while on a trip away to a remote vacation home (because nothing ever goes wrong in obscure cabins) with her husband Gerald. As a form of experimentation, he handcuffs his wife to the bed. Not everything goes as planned, the two end up arguing and in the midst of the situation, he proceeds to have a heart attack. Gerald’s life ends but his “game” is far from over.

With her husband’s body toppling right on top of her, Jessie’s horror at the situation is palpable. What sounds like a laughable premise sets up one of the most frightening, gruesome yet heartfelt and emotional Stephen King adaptations.

This is not a horror movie in the traditional sense. It’s a profound character study and an unrelenting one at that. Jessie begins seeing hallucinations of her husband and, stranger still, of a much harsher tougher version of herself. In this scenario, it’s almost like she has an angel and a devil on her shoulders, pushing her to do whatever it takes to survive no matter how impossible it seems.

Flanagan lets the audience dwell in Jessie’s fear. It’s almost tangible, particularly as night falls and in the darkness, Jessie begins seeing another far more insidious hallucination, if it is one at all. She isn’t sure and neither are we. Flanagan also makes exceptional use of frightening imagery and excellent sound design, particularly in scenes involving Jessie’s late night visitor, The Moonlight Man.

Amongst her hallucinations, Jessie’s inescapable situation and oh, also a starving wild dog in her room (because the film makes it a point to show that the door to the house was left open) is also a childhood memory that Jessie has tried to repress but left to her own thoughts and devices, she realizes perhaps her dark past is what has led to her predicament and might, in an odd way, be her savior.

As gory and disturbing as it gets, nowhere is Flangan’s harrowing direction more effective than in the scenes involving her latent memory. Without holding back, he unrelentingly makes Jessie deal with it and in the process, makes us deal with it too. Very rarely have I seen such harrowing direction of subject matter this sensitive.

Gerald’s Game uses horror elements and themes to relay the story of a woman who has perhaps been chained in one way or another throughout her life. While Greenwood portrays the hallucinated alpha male with convincing bravado, Gugino is at the center and she deserves to be. She’s downright brilliant.

While I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with it, with all the emphasis on metaphors and themes Gerald’s Game so obviously provides, one would expect it to remain open ended and a lot more subtle in its conclusion. But as any Stephen King reader will tell you, the endings aren’t always the strongest. Still, Flanagan manages to adapt it as fittingly as he could.

Reportedly, Gerald’s Game is the book Flanagan had wanted to cinematically adapt since he was a teen. Despite an ending some might hate, he handles the material with such care and tact, his aspirations are clearly realized.

If you liked Gerald’s Game, watch Berlin Syndrome. After a young woman meets a foreign man in Berlin, what’s supposed to be a holiday romance becomes a permanent hostage situation as he locks her in his apartment and refuses to let her leave.