Review of Gerald's Game (2017) by Renovatia — 30 May 2018

I didn't know Stephen King was into drama. It sure wasn't a thriller or horror. Basically the protagonist Jessie is handcuffed to a bed because her man went down from a heart attack during a failed attempt at spicing up their sexlife. You can see this in the trailer.

What happens then, is that she begins to hallucinate: her dead man's spirit rises up from his body and constantly puts doubt in her mind. Then she herself appears too and she personifies the confident side of Jessie. Through story-telling and Jessie's imagination we discover she was abused as a twelve year old by her dad. Hence her current troubled marriage with a older man. So far good old drama. Nothing else but talk and some more drama.

Then some tall malformed mysterious figure enters the house and leaves. She'll meet him later when she's unshackled and she gives him her ring as she thinks that's what he wants. Nobody knows what he wanted anyway. He's only here to add a little shock-effect story-wise at the end of the movie.

So she escapes her shackles but crashes the car and ends up in the hospital. Then the long epilogue begins with 10 minutes of more soliloquy explaining herself in her writings (to explain her situation to the viewer). The twist is that the tall ugly visitor is actually real - wasn't her imagination - and he visited her house indeed. He's a serial killer but only interested in killing men. So she got to live. He's also a necrophiliac. So why he was there is unknown. Maybe he was waiting for her death because of Necrophilia, but that is speculation on my end and wasn't even explained in the original book.

They catch him and she confronts him, seeing in him her husband and her abusive father, basically indicating she overcame her bad experiences. Why her husband was put in a negative light is also beyond me. He didn't do anything factually. He was forcefully made bad as an apparition (after he died of said heart attack) by putting doubt in her mind, but that's it.

All in all a typical Netflix movie, boring with the usual touch of men-hate. Where the good reviews come from is beyond me. I think the movie is somewhat presented as a horror/thriller because of Stephen King's reputation. But the original book is equally boring.

All in all a movie full of emo drivel which I'm sure is loved by critics and the misandrist clique of Hollywood, New York and their reporters.

Three points because the two main actors did technically a good job.