I don’t know when Mike Flanagan became the best horror filmmaker working today. I think it was sometime around Hush, the nerve-ratcheting thriller in which a deaf woman is stalked in her house by a psychopathic hunter, when I first suspected that he was the real deal. His first two features, Absentia and Oculus, were enjoyable in their toying with points of view and using imagery to leap through time. But his next two, Hush and the superior Ouija: Origin of Evil, revealed a director with more than just skill.
Like Hush, Gerald’s Game is about a would-be-submissive woman trapped by a would-be-dominant man in a one-player game of his own making. Jessie (Carla Gugino) and her husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) flee to a remote cabin for a romantic getaway intended to reinvigorate their marriage. What surprises Jessie is that Gerald has brought two sets of handcuffs--which he is sure to point out are real and not flimsy sex toys--and intends to spice up their sex life by chaining her to the bedposts. He does. And then he dies of a heart attack right on top of her.
Flanagan has been wanting to film Stephen King’s novel for his whole career, and it shows. Given that it’s mostly a one-character book, and most of the dialogue takes place within Jessie’s head, Flanagan cleverly develops a way to tell the story that is neither too literal nor too meddlesome. Once Jessie is cuffed to the bed alone, she imagines another version of herself escaping easily, as well as her husband springing back to life. The two figures act as the angel and devil on her shoulders throughout the film, and though that sounds trite, it works the way Flanagan does it. It helps that both Gugino and Greenwood are exceptional and their strained relationship is always believable. Gugino in particular is adept at acting against herself, as the surer, more confident version of herself gives guidance to the panicking inmate on how to escape.
I wouldn't dare reveal what happens to Jessie while she's chained to the bed: only that it bridges the practicality of Jessie's situation with a supernatural element in the way that King does best. Flanagan translates the world of the bedroom flawlessly, in a way that makes every corner seem like a new place in and of itself, and the floor at the foot of the bed--which Jessie is unable to see--like a different room altogether. There is one night scene in particular where Flanagan finds a way to simultaneously show us everything and make us doubt what we've seen: a moving camera quietly glides past something, and we wonder if it was what we thought it was. (It was.)
As in the novel, Jessie faces both external and internal hardship, both reflecting the control that the men in her life have exerted over her since she was a child. A flashback, abrupt but necessary, reveals the parallel figure of her father, played with a note of menacing banality by Henry Thomas, who binds her mind in the same way that her husband has bound her hands. Her confrontation of her own possible death leads her to confront her victimhood, which has culminated in Gerald's imposing of his own rape fantasy upon her.
The ending, usually a weak point in King's work, plays a bit awkwardly here, mostly because of an invasive voice-over that the movie had cautiously avoided until this point. But the ending works thematically, as a simultaneous dismissal and confirmation of Jessie's lifelong struggle. She has, to an extent, conquered her fears, but they were all real: not merely in her head, but real, imposed upon her by the men in her life--her father, her husband, and one which shall go unnamed here--who were seeking to pawn them off of themselves. They are, as she says toward the end, not as big as she thought, but they were there.
*** 1/2 out of ****
