Nick's unshaven video-game swoon; Carrie Coon as the twin sister; the vigil selfie turning on Nick; the Nancy Grace character Ellen Abbott; the detective team of Kim Dickens and Patrick Fugit; the Mastermind board game and the other games; the Reznor and Ross spa-dread score; the meticulousness of Amy's plan; the side dick; Rosamund Pike's performance; the Twincest; Affleck's Mets hat; every small role perfectly cast; the twist
Affleck's unshaven video-game swoon has aged best for one host, a true-to-life moment that probably happened to him around 2006, bummed out in his living room with a laptop; Carrie Coon, in her first role, is believable as his twin, though ten years younger, and went on to star in The Leftovers.
The first gathering where the lady takes a selfie with them and then turns on them is really well done and has surely happened to Ben Affleck in real life; the Nancy Grace character Ellen Abbott and the detective team of Kim Dickens and grown-up Almost Famous star Patrick Fugit also hold up.
Fincher reportedly told press that the Mastermind board game Nick gives his sister was a red herring thrown in for his own amusement at critics scribbling it down; one host does not believe that for a second, arguing the games shown, Let's Make a Deal as they make their deal, Life with its meta line and a Ouija board as her talking from the dead, are all on purpose, and Mastermind is a game about entrapment and being smarter than your opponent; a confession of cheating at board games follows.
Fincher briefed Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (transcribed 'Tannicus') after a spa visit where music meant to relax him felt creepy, wanting passive music that instills dread, and the result feels like a spa where you might get stabbed in the aorta mid-massage; with Social Network it is an all-time two-for-two, Reznor's scores are argued to rival Nine Inch Nails in his legacy, with the ER episode that used Closer floated as his origin, and the Desi murder cue feels like it emanates from inside your chest, the hardest left turn the film takes.
The meticulousness of the plan has aged well, pouring wine on herself, untucking his shirt and knowing where every security camera is.
She disputes that: Amy's meticulous nature governs everything with Nick, plotted since she saw him with Andy in the snow replicating the lip wipe and sugar cloud from their own origin story, down to the 'kill self?' calendar entry, whereas the Desi material is purely reactive and instinctual, which is why she thinks the end of the movie does not work; Amy thought Desi would be another puppet, realized she was the prisoner in the dollhouse he built, and her way out is sloppy. — Mallory Rubin
The counter: she either went to Desi's knowing what she would do or decided once she lost her money, parked as an unanswerable question; Nick's woodshed line in the interview shows her he can keep up with her; anyone with eight weeks could fake a death, but she devised an instant exit without implicating herself, though she had already lost weight, cut and dyed her hair and built up rope marks on her wrists, so twenty-something days had passed.
One side holds that she got away with it only because the FBI agents should be jailed, not because she did a good job; the other sees an acid-dipped commentary from a female writer on believing women and survivors and the FBI's historical approach to trauma, something fraught and complicated inside an otherwise whirling thriller.
The side dick has aged best for one host, and nobody mentions that Desi's is visible too when she slides off him; Rosamund Pike's performance as Amy Dunn (as transcribed), which will live forever, is another host's answer to every category; the Twincest reference was followed by years of Twincest on Game of Thrones.
Affleck putting on a Mets hat in the airport, refusing the Yankees hat Fincher had in his head, has aged fantastically and the fight between them is great; the nitpick is that he should have worn a Cardinals hat given his Cardinals shirt, unless he bought it at the airport.
Also the musical score, awe-inspiring when it kicks in at Desi's murder; every single small role is perfectly cast, which everyone agrees has aged well; and the twist itself.
The first hour is watchable but rewatchability heats up around the big turn; the first nominee is Affleck coming home to find Amy missing and calling the police, with the neighbor across the street, the lady cop quietly suspicious because it is usually the husband, and the meticulousness of the search, which sets the film up as a whodunit it is not.
You have to instantly believe Rhonda Boney knows what she is doing, because she is a central figure and the last life raft for hoping someone keeps pursuing the case; her post-it notes on the blood spatter and the way she reads the plugged-in iron beside a dress that represents romance show something is up right away.
The outdoor Amy rally with protesters is a good scene with a good twist, shot wide so it feels like another bullshit vigil before the turn against Ben Affleck; Casey Wilson is great as Noelle, the extremely dumb pregnant neighbor seduced into Amy's plan, and the shots of Emily Ratajkowski mouthing words back at him and of Affleck fleeing cameras in slow motion like a lumbering old quarterback are smartly staged.
The big reveal, 'I am so much happier now that I'm dead', arrives one hour and seven minutes in, a point where Bloodsport is nearly over; Amy's monologue runs about five pages on IMDb though it is much shorter than the book's cool girl passage, and a first-time viewer briefly fears a dead-narrator movie before 'technically missing, soon to be presumed dead' lands.
Asked to read the bold paragraph aloud, she asks which part, protests that her dad listens to these podcasts, hates the 'befriend a local idiot, fake a murder' part because she feels bad for the local, and identifies the waxing passage as the part she is being made to read before reading it. — Mallory Rubin
The paragraph read aloud, waxing, canned beer and Adam Sandler movies, cold pizza at a size two, forging the man of her dreams and being the happiest couple they knew, is called the whole movie in one paragraph: a couple that learned to like the identity of being a couple more than being together; someone asks whether there were no salons in New York.
Taking issue with that reading, he recalls his father, not a speech-giver, sitting him down before his wedding to say that people change: Nick changes and becomes a less good partner, Amy becomes more insane with a history of manipulation involving Skeet Ulrich's character, and after the sparks of first meeting everyone has pitched a slightly more appealing version of themselves. — Sean Fennessey
The other key passage is 'you think I'd let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn't get to win. Grownups work for things, grownups pay, grownups suffer consequences.'
Teased that he has the happiest marriage anyone on the show knows and yet loves a film that is its opposite, he answers that it ends with her covered in blood coming back, and it is fun to watch and be glad that is not him right now. — Shea Serrano
Lola Kirk (as transcribed) is shouted out as the runaway Dionne Waiters (as transcribed) winner, especially the pool scene and her re-enactment of Affleck touching Emily's face; Nick's interview with the TV host played by the actress from The Fugitive (transcribed 'Cee LaWord') works like the unseen heist in Reservoir Dogs, cutting to the car where he is told how good he was.
Amy's return to Nick's house is called amazing: one host watching with Laramie, who had read the book, could not believe her stumbling out of the car covered in blood, with Affleck's 'you bitch' in her ear, the 'I'm not a quitter' lead-up to the interview and the twin sister crying devastated in the kitchen, an amazing Carrie Coon performance; that host's pick is Amy returning and everything after, while another much prefers the beginning.
Smaller early picks: the first police interview, where 'she's a voracious reader' reveals how little Nick knows about his wife, Boney's instant lack of trust, Gil asking whether they are really married and the blood-type question, which leaves the hosts admitting they do not know their own or their wives' blood types, or even their social security numbers.
The press conference: Nick's four words devoid of sincere emotion, the iconic pie-eating grin beside the poster, contrasted with her parents going into stump-speech mode with talking points; the parents sold her childhood and turned her into something others could digest, which earns some sympathy for Amy and explains both relationships.
The Desi murder has to be in the list as the most iconic, amazingly staged scene, with Amy untucking his shirt so the security cameras catch him tucking it back in, but some find it too unpleasant to rewatch; even on a seventh or eighth viewing, the throat slicing still shocks.
The reveal is the pick for several: one expected the familiar turn where the husband's face goes evil and the body is in the basement, and instead sat hands on head listening to her explain everything; 'America loves pregnant women' followed by calling Noelle a pregnant idiot, and the closing pregnancy reveal, tie it all neatly together.
The seduction scenes are also good: the meet-cute at the party, the proposal at the Amazing Amy book party, Nick posing as a journalist, really a men's-magazine writer; the reveal, another host's pick, references those fairy-tale early days as true and crucial, the foundation for believing in their love at all.
What makes the reveal great beyond the shock is the pride and vindication in Amy's meticulous steps, 300 diary entries written with different pens, sitting on the kitchen floor of a home in his hometown she never wanted, an IV draining her own blood while she reads a book, with a quick shot that Nick would clean poorly; one host would pay for just the first part as a rom-com, which is said to already exist as He's Just Not That Into You.
