Where I Watched it: Netflix

English Audio description Provided By Descriptive Video Works

Narrated by Diane Newman

After watching Mike Flanagan’s multiple series for Netflix, I have come to appreciate his brand of horror. he always manages to include gore, but he really is interested in character development. That’s why it is so weird that Gerald’s game is directed by him.

The movie starts rather quickly and doesn’t waste time. A couple (Carla Gugino, Bruce greenwood) are on an excursion to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for some romantic sexy time. While this may seem like a spoiler, it’s the necessary catalyst, but Gerald (Greenwood) dies shortly after handcuffing his wife to the bed, and thus begins the horror of being handcuffed to a bed next to your dead husband. And if that wasn’t weird enough, this Stephen King story has something to say about monsters.

While trapped on the bed, gugino has conversations with herself, literally, as well as her husband (now dead), so it’s not just her alone in a room. There are also… visitors? I don’t want to spoil that, but it is Stephen King, and shit gets weird. Perhaps too weird since this story is deeply grounded in reality, and we meet our two main characters with almost no backstory given. We only know what we see in this short period of time, and it’s not a lot to go off of. The rest comes out in these conversations, and some flashbacks, but it still never really made me feel like I knew these people.

I love Gugino, and thought she was fantastic in Peacock’s little seen leopard Skin, but here she isn’t the most convincing lead. I never really bought that she ever thought she might die. Aside from that, her character’s backstory is so strikingly odd to feature, that it feels a little like throwing darts at a wall, or pulling plot points out of a hat. Not to mention the other thing that comes into the house, or really how the movie chooses to finish. Honestly, this movie’s desire to wrap everything up with a nice bow was the wrong call. I can’t really give context, but there’s a car crash sequence that would have been a much better, yet admittedly abrupt way to end the film. I felt everything after that just made it worse.

A mixed bag, where the audio description does a solid job of keeping up the promise of something wicked coming our way, and focusing on gore wherever applicable. It’s just easily the least interesting thing Flanagan has tackled, and for someone who loves to flesh out the characters, I still feel like I barely know anything about these two.

Final Grade: C+