Review of Gerald's Game (2017) by Joshua J — 08 Aug 2018

This is one of my favorite Stephen King books and if you haven't read the book, there are a few details in the movie that aren't fully explained might have you scratching your head. For starters, the dog belonged to a little girl, his name was Prince and he was abandoned up there not long prior to the events of this film, hence, why he is so "nice".

The main character, Jesse, has heard voices since the day at the lake with her dad, so this whole" losing it" thing isn't exactly new for her. The "dream" she speaks about, with the woman dressed in red, looking down the well full of secrets, was about a vision she had as a child of Dolores Claiborne, at the moment she shoved her husband down into the old well for molesting their daughter.

She had the vision in her bedroom, on the day of the eclipse. The ending in the book is the same as in the movie, but the terror the book encites when Jesse realizes that the man in the corner was real, not an illusion, is somehow lost in translation.

Overall, the acting was superb and spot on. One wouldn't think that playing a woman tied to a bed could be interesting but Gugino sells the moments of terror, emotional pain and triumph perfectly! I wish they would have explored the college roommate she was actually conversing with, instead of showing her talk to visions of herself and her dead husband, because the point of the story was her finally coming to terms with how the events at the lake shaped her life and ultimately, got her trapped.