David Fincher
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Longlegs (2024)
Directed by Osgood Perkins
influenced by Zodiac (2007), Se7en (1995)
Visuals Themes Plot
These ominous notes recall the crime scene leave-behind notes of David Fincher’s 1995 breakout Se7en, and they contain written ciphers that also harken back to Fincher’s later Zodiac.
Oregon's dimmed-down yellow lighting and eerie mistiness are reminiscent of David Fincher's Se7en and Zodiac or Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners.
Although the presence of Longlegs at any of these brutal killings cannot be proven, mysterious letters reminiscent of the ones in David Fincher’s Zodiac are left as a sort of signature at each scene. Longlegs is known to conduct each murder in a systematic way, where the father of a family is seemingly coerced or convinced into killing his own.
Yes, it is easily this decade’s answer to films such as The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, but it is by no means the perfect masterpiece that it has been touted as.
Osgood Perkins further evolves the dark aesthetic of his previous features, and while his script will quickly draw comparisons to The Silence Of The Lambs (with a bit of a push provided by the period setting), the narrative is matched it with a green, brown, and grey-heavy pallet reminiscent of David Fincher’s work and evokes connections to Zodiac and the series Mindhunter.
Her boss (Blair Underwood) tasks her with decoding a series of the fugitive’s cryptic messages left at the scenes of grisly murder-suicides in Pacific Northwest family homes. These ominous notes recall the crime scene leave-behind notes of David Fincher’s 1995 breakout Se7en, and they contain written ciphers that also harken back to Fincher’s later Zodiac. “I’m telling you,” a skeptical fellow agent speculates about Lee’s acumen, “she’s not ready for this.”
Galloping on to a no-holds-barred finale, Fincher and Koepp plug in plot devices right and left while also boldly snatching from the likes of Hitchcock's “Rear Window” and the wonderful 1967 Terence Young nail-biter “Wait Until Dark”--though they never come close to capturing their predecessors' white-knuckle thrills.
In outline, "Panic Room's" cat-and-mouse maneuvers between good and evil in the same enclosed space is unapologetically derivative, familiar from films as serious as the Audrey Hepburn-starring "Wait Until Dark" and as silly as "Home Alone."
And one hopes Fincher has had fun making a popcorn picture, with his sly references to Rear Window, Rope, and Wait Until Dark (to name but a few) and not a cultural zeitgeist in sight.
"Panic Room" is a modern day take on "Wait Until Dark," rejuvenated by a stylish technician and first rate cast.
Almost the entire thing takes place in one night inside the walls of the same confined set (think Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark), yet the entertainment value Mr. Fincher gets from claustrophobic muck when good people try to survive in the dark is compelling, and the contrast between Panic Room�s climactic outbursts of deplorable bloodshed and the dazzling sunlight of the film�s peaceful epilogue in Central Park makes for a startling dramatic metaphor.
My first thought after I saw this movie was, "Home Alone for adults and without the comedy and Wait Until Dark" I know that sounds a bit weird, but that summed it up for me.
All the President's Men (1976)
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
influenced Zodiac (2007), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Themes Visuals Plot
It’s tempting to compare the film to Pakula’s All the President’s Men, and that film is without question a touchstone for this one in many ways.
Tonally, the movie owes more to movies like “All the President’s Men” than “Serpico,” though one can find modern-day touchstones in films like Robert De Niro’s “The Good Shepherd” or Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” without dragging or trying to shoehorn superfluous scenes into the story.
Fincher evokes the suspense and dramatic build-up of "All the President's Men" (1976) as his three protagonists uncover more and more information.
While it’s understandable that he wants to branch out and try something new, such as making a chatty thriller in the vein of All The President’s Men, it doesn’t click and fails to be gripping throughout its hefty running time.
It's inspired partly by films such as The Conversation and All the President's Men, the taut political thrillers of the 1970s.
The tone echoes that of many vérité thrillers of the era, such as The French Connection or All the President's Men.
As a matter of fact, I daresay the film covers every major aspect of a crime spree such as this one: the effect on the investigators' personal lives, the media coverage ("Dirty Harry" was directly inspired by Zodiac), the nutcases who come out of the woodworks, the copycats, the procession of false leads and near-arrests, the politics, the paperwork, the red tape, and the paranoia.
Toschi was supposedly the inspiration for the characters played by Steve McQueen in "Bullitt" and Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry."
As Inspector Dave Toschi, the SFPD detective who has inspired the characters behind three career-making turns (Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, which was loosely based on the Zodiac case, Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Michael Douglas in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco), Mark Ruffalo captures the vocal rasp and gruff energy of a homicide cop with an antithetical jones for kids' snack foods.
Mr. Toschi's unique way of wearing his holster provided the inspiration for Steve McQueen in "Bullitt"; The serial killer Scorpio from the first "Dirty Harry" movie was modeled on Zodiac; Brian Cox's character, Melvin Belli, appeared in the "And the Children Shall Lead" episode of the original "Star Trek" series.
To a point, that’s intentional: Zodiac was never caught, and Fincher aims to creep you out with the lack of closure, with the absence of a Dirty Harry?style climax and windup (Dirty Harry being one of the myriad serial-killer thrillers that drew its inspiration?if…
One of the film�s best scenes is a special screening of Dirty Harry held for the SFPD and just as Fincher shows us the obvious parallel between Zodiac and that film�s villain, he then trusts us with our knowledge of the film and the Zodiac's threats by using only the audio to creepily typify entertainment�s �ripped from the headlines� mentality.
Game Night (2018)
Directed by John Francis Daley
influenced by The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Gone Girl (2014), The Social Network (2010)
Plot Visuals
Game Night finds a bunch of boring suburban couples placed in what amounts to a comedic version of Fincher's 1997 thriller, The Game, with references to some of his other films such as Fight Club and Gone Girl sprinkled in like lollipops in a game of CandyLand.
Ryan’s obsession with the idea that people are hosting fight clubs could be taken as an allusion to that, since “Fight Club” was Fincher’s follow-up to “The Game.”
For every sly shade at Skeet Ulrich (!!) and the Hulk franchise, there’s a groaner about Morgan Freeman and Fight Club.
No Fincher fanatic would confuse any of this for a shrewd imitation, but they’ll still recognize the ways that directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein ( Vacation ) nod to that revered perfectionist: with a Fight Club reference here, a Gone Girl unreliable-narrator gag there, and a sickly, slickly fluorescent visual palette throughout.
In a film crammed with rapid fire pop-culture references, of course the characters compare the pugilist party to Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut and Django Unchained.
These people may have fallen down some rabbit hole of their own devising, but couldn't it be argued that we have as well, in a topsy-turvy world that finds its reflection onscreen, alongside references to Trump and racist websites, not to mention such diverse films as Django Unchained, Eyes Wide Shut , and Fight Club .
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Directed by Irving Pichel
influenced Zodiac (2007), The Game (1997)
Themes Plot
Instead, the letter rips off themes from "The Most Dangerous Game," a Richard Connell short story frequently included in high school literature anthologies about an obsessed hunter who stalks shipwrecked humans on his private island.
While Graysmith solves part of the first cipher, revealing its manhunting reference to the 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game, for the first two-thirds of the film Fincher has Gyllenhaal literally looming in the background, as two more murders occur and the letters keep coming, one threatening to pick off schoolchildren as they step off the bus.
The Zodiac code seems to contain a reference to a 1932 movie, The Most Dangerous Game, in which a madman hunts human prey.
When the phrase “man is the most dangerous animal of all” ends up in one of Zodiac’s letters to the newspaper, a possible connection is drawn to the Richard Connell short story (invariably referred to as a book in the movie) “The Most Dangerous Game” and its 1932 film incarnation.
Graysmith goes one better when he connects a Salinas couple’s interpretation of the cipher to a 1932 RKO film entitled "The Most Dangerous Game," about a Russian Count who hunts people on his private island.
A wild mix of "After Hours," "The Most Dangerous Game" and "A Christmas Carol," "The Game" imaginatively places a self-absorbed businessman into the middle of a deadly, real-life game of cat-and-mouse and then watches him fight for his survival, both emotionally and physically.
The Little Things (2021)
Directed by John Lee Hancock
influenced by Se7en (1995), Zodiac (2007)
Themes Plot
Think of the early to late-1990s/early-aughts heyday of such cop-saviour fantasies as Kiss the Girls, The Glimmer Man, The Watcher, Washington’s own The Bone Collector and Fallen, or Se7en (but without David Fincher’s nihilistic themes and uncompromising aesthetic).
You know the one’s, the kind of movie that hit its popular apex with The Silence of the Lambs , followed by a boatload of bad knockoffs until David Fincher refined and eventually perfected the genre with Se7en and Zodiac .
Written and directed by John Lee Hancock (see “The Blind Side” and the locally shot “The Founder”), “The Little Things” will be inevitably compared to David Fincher’s “Se7en.”
We’ve since seen the same concept done better in masterpieces such as “Se7en” (1995), “Zodiac” (2007) and “Prisoners” (2013).
What could have been an interesting film turns out to be nothing more than a lackluster Se7en rip-off.
To be fair, before watching the film, I was pretty excited to delve back into the vibe of Se7en and myriad other serial killer movies of the 1990s, Hollywood projects aping The Silence of the Lambs while reacting to the age of grunge and Dahmer and Marilyn Manson.
Toschi was supposedly the inspiration for the characters played by Steve McQueen in "Bullitt" and Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry."
Toschi is a legendary San Francisco detective, the inspiration for Steve McQueen's character in Bullitt, as well as "Dirty" Harry Callahan and Michael Douglas's character in The Streets of San Francisco.
As Inspector Dave Toschi, the SFPD detective who has inspired the characters behind three career-making turns (Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, which was loosely based on the Zodiac case, Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Michael Douglas in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco), Mark Ruffalo captures the vocal rasp and gruff energy of a homicide cop with an antithetical jones for kids' snack foods.
Mr. Toschi's unique way of wearing his holster provided the inspiration for Steve McQueen in "Bullitt"; The serial killer Scorpio from the first "Dirty Harry" movie was modeled on Zodiac; Brian Cox's character, Melvin Belli, appeared in the "And the Children Shall Lead" episode of the original "Star Trek" series.
As Graysmith delves ever more deeply into the seeping bog of the case –which became both a media event and a kind of mass panic in the Bay area between '69 and '72 – he is drawn into the wary orbit of the cops assigned to the case: Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), the rumpled local semi-celebrity who inspired both Steve McQueen's Bullitt and Clint Eastwood's (Dirty) Harry Callaghan – and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), a devoted flatfoot whose steely professionalism will ultimately melt under the heat generated by the case.
In other words, it's believable that Ruffalo's cop could have shown Steve McQueen how to be a detective in "Bullitt," as Toschi did in real life.
“Cummings claims the Coen brothers and David Fincher as influences, and there are certainly echoes of Blood Simple, Seven and Zodiac here, but the filmmaker he most brings to mind is Hal Hartley: the deadpan delivery punctuated by bursts of expressionism, eccentric characters populating naturalistic environments and an idiosyncratic mix of art-house and genre sensibilities.”
Several sequences pay affectionate tribute to Zodiac , and there’s more than a tinge of David Fincher’s infinitely rewatchable magnum opus in the way John’s life crumbles as he obsesses over the seemingly unsolvable killings.
Cummings’ inspirations were Fincher police procedurals Se7en and Zodiac, and it’s evident in the solving of the horrifying crimes at the heart of the movie, and the slow drip-feed of suspects (one of whom hilariously has a wolf tattoo), how much thought went into making this not just a strong werewolf story but a gripping mystery too.
The wintry small-town feel present in “The Werewolf of Snow Hollow” has shades of “Fargo” with a hint of “ Zodiac ,” but most of all, Cummings crafts an indie horror flick of his own style.
The Batman (2022)
Directed by Matt Reeves
influenced by Zodiac (2007), Se7en (1995), The Game (1997), The Social Network (2010)
Plot Characters Visuals
The film is more of a police procedural in the vein of David Fincher’s SE7EN (1995); it’s been noted that Reeve’s version of Riddler is partly inspired by the infamous serial killer Zodiac who operated in California in the late 1960s, hence the Fincher vibes.
But as The Batman progresses further, Dano’s serial-killer character that echoes the respective antagonists from David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) and Zodiac (2007) with a dash of Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw from the Saw franchise, looks like he’s trying too hard to make his Riddler a standout.
Reeves (who co-wrote the film with Peter Craig) brings an excellent amount of style to “The Batman,” though it often feels like it’s borrowing a lot from David Fincher (particularly “Se7en” and “Zodiac”) with some Michael Mann thrown in for good measure.
In using David Fincher’s Se7en and Zodiac as inspirations for his vision, Reeves has made his magnum opus that rivals the best we’ve seen from any previous version of the Dark Knight on the screen.
Unlike previous cinematic versions of the caped crusader, Reeves takes interesting creative liberties and steers “The Batman” into a detective noir complete with major David Fincher vibes (think if “Se7en'' or “The Zodiac” had Batman walking around).
The Caped Crusader, Jim Gordon, and Selina investigating the clues provided by The Riddler, The Riddler’s John Doe, Se7en inspired contraptions for his kills, and the slow uncovering of the rot in Gotham politics makes for a satisfying detective story that never becomes dull and engrosses the audience completely.
Daniel Isn't Real (2019)
Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer
influenced by Fight Club (1999)
Themes Plot
Adapted from the novel In This Way I Was Saved by Brian DeLeeuw (who also co-wrote the script), Daniel Isn’t Real soon brings to mind David Fincher’s cult classic Fight Club .
Daniel Isn’t Real is a psychological trip that you feel genre cinema has taken before – Mandy, Fight Club, Drop Dead Fred and Jacob’s Ladder are all easy reference points – but there are enough stylistic flurries and touches here to make it a memorable film and one that only benefits from repeated viewings.
While the film flirts with ideas of mental illness, religious possession and ancient supernatural forces – and, in doing so, wears myriad influences from The Exorcist and Jacob's Ladder to Donnie Darko and Fight Club prominently on its sleeve – none are explored in any depth beyond their ability to produce a scare.
Based on a novel by Brian DeLeeuw -- who co-wrote the screenplay with director Adam Egypt Mortimer -- Daniel Isn't Real lightly travels familiar territory, with shades of Fight Club , Donnie Darko , and American Psycho.
In the two decades since Fight Club, horror fans have been inundated with their fair share of me-too genre offerings centered on protagonists battling against the voices inside their heads, usually externalised as charismatic and/or terrifying entities.
It’s basically Fight Club for the Instagram generation, with Miles Robbins (son of Tim) appropriately haunted as Luke and Patrick Schwarzenegger (son of Arnold) chillingly smarmy as his cravat-wearing invisible buddy.
Stearns's second feature mines similar territory to David Fincher's brooding classic, Fight Club (1999).
His style touches on both the comic absurdity of a Coen Brothers movie and the graphic, giddy violence of Fight Club, but the tone shifts often feel queasy, as if Stearns wants to critique these things but revel in them too.
If films like In Bruges, Dr. Strangelove, Fight Club, and The Favourite are your type of comedy, then The Art of Self-Defense is not only a must-see, it’s an easy contender for the best film of the year so far.
El arte de defenderse (The Art of Self-Defense, 2018), segundo largometraje de ficción de Riley Stearns (Faults, 2014), invita a las comparaciones con Fight Club (Dir.
A caricature of toxic masculinity that watches like a navelgazing, mumblecore Fight Club, Self-Defense uses zero subtlety as aesthetic affectation.
Twenty years ago, Fight Club presented a satirical look at the male psyche and our obsession with consumerism.
Clarity and tact have gotten the hell out of Dodge, stranding stars Emma Roberts (FOX’s “Scream Queens”) and Dave Franco (“ Neighbors ”) in a narrative ghost town whose currency is implausibility and where the only television around is playing a loop of David Fincher’s “The Game” (arguably the director’s worst film).
It’s like an update of the 1997 David Fincher thriller “The Game,” only with an ominous hint of this is where the world is heading! that feels more like “The Purge.”
The title refers to a new app that all of the most popular kids in school can’t stop talking about — an augmented reality contest that’s essentially a cross between “Periscope,” “Pokémon Go,” and David Fincher’s “The Game.”
Schulman and Joost’s new techno-thriller Nerve ingeniously reinvents The Game for the age of Snapchat and Periscope, with the corporate nefariousness of David Fincher’s film replaced by dark-web hackers and peer-to-peer voyeurs and sadists.
The game gets as big as The Game and the dark web that runs it is as easily accessible as The Net.
Schulman and Joost’s latest collaboration, the teen thriller Nerve, throws little bits of The Purge and David Fincher’s The Game into the current trends of social media virality and augmented reality games, and the film surprisingly hits more often than it misses.
North by Northwest (1959)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Panic Room (2002), The Game (1997)
Plot Characters Visuals Themes
What emerges is a very poor man's North by Northwest without much moral nuance and a decreasing number of thrills.
He arouses sympathy for the thoroughly unlikable Nicholas, turning him into one of the hapless protagonists of "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man" or "Saboteur."
The opening credits, where the titles are placed on buildings, are obviously inspired by the opening credits of North by Northwest.
And the most arresting element of this look -- and the homage to Hitchcock -- is the film's title sequence, in which the credits hang in the midair of Manhattan with an eerie holographic effect, winking at both the discordant opening of "North by Northwest" and 3-D of "Dial M for Murder."
Giving Panic Room four stars comes dangerously close to exalting top-shelf Bond movies to the level of North by Northwest.
Underscoring the insular nature--gimmick?--of the piece, Fincher's opening credit sequence reflects an architectural vision that is not only startling but also recalls the canted lines opening Hitchcock's North by Northwest and the fetishistic iconography found in the same.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
influenced by Se7en (1995)
Visuals Plot Themes
The pig puppet dressed in a police uniform pulverizes the nail on the head, while the grimy, color-coded references to “Se7en” just remind us of what “Spiral” isn’t: enthralling or suspenseful.
In 1995, David Fincher’s Se7en also paired a hardened detective with an up-and-coming rookie, and tasked them with solving a series of murders linked by intricate riddles and a collective theme.
Instead of a strictly ninth Saw flick, they give you something from the Book of Saw, mixing 48 Hours and Se7en with the perfect amount of echoes of the iconic horror series.
Personally, the film felt like a great opportunity to branch out with a SE7EN -style film that could take some chances to expand the Saw universe while pushing the talented cast.
The series has always indulged in frothy police procedural nonsense but never more enthusiastically than here, which with the lavish cinematography and production quality that a $20 million budget allows, is superficially easy to accept as a contemporary riff on Se7en by way of Training Day.
The latest installment bears more in common with Se7en than Saw , which might prove polarizing for longtime fans.
“Don’t Breathe” is an original story – never mind that it borrows liberally from David Fincher’s “Panic Room” and Adam Wingard’s “ You’re Next ” – that pits three thieves against a blind man who turns out to be a ruthless killer.
When David Fincher made the confined-space “Panic Room” in 2002, he first incorporated “pre-viz” into his increasingly digital work, pre-visualizing each and every camera move before building even an inch of the set representing a 94th Street Manhattan brownstone .
Imagine if the thugs from Panic Room (2002) broke into Jodie Foster’s house and found her whacked-out uncle waiting for them in his underwear.
A bit like The People Under the Stairs meets Panic Room, the latest collaboration from Alvarez and Ghost House pummels its viewers (in a good way, of course) as much as it punishes its characters, and just when you think that things can’t possibly get any crazier, Don’t Breathe kicks things up a notch, creating a blisteringly fun thrill ride that’s a perfect showcase for Alvarez’s macabre cinematic sensibilities.
Alvarez masterfully sustains tension in thriller mode, partly by shooting slick Steadicam moves and showing restraint in cutting (Alvarez seems to have taken a lesson or two from David Fincher’s similarly themed Panic Room).
Panic Room meets Wait Until Dark in this pitiless, uncommonly serviceable horror thriller.
Fatal Attraction (1987)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
influenced Gone Girl (2014), The Game (1997)
Plot Visuals Characters Themes
The film, with a screenplay by Flynn, is as bifurcated as the half-truths it is built on, with echoes of "To Die For" and "Fatal Attraction."
Sure, it makes knowing nods to classics directed by Hitchcock, let alone lesser but hugely popular ’80s flicks as Fatal Attraction and The Jagged Edge.
Pike leaves nothing behind, delving full throttle into an iconic performance that will rank up there with the likes of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.
Suffice to say that its explicit sex and violence and one-damn-thing-after-another, to-hell-with-realism plotting put it in the " Basic Instinct "/" Fatal Attraction "/" Presumed Innocent " wheelhouse.
The fact that this film is getting as much play on the talk-show route as “Fatal Attraction” did only makes me think of the dirth of quality TV, and that the Super-smart, Sexy, Ivy-league, Sociopathic Wife is merely the latest flavor of the month — probably to keep us, the 99%, from looking at the real sociopaths who run things.
Shocking, subversive, and often wickedly funny, Gone Girl is not Fincher’s best film, but certainly one of his most entertaining, and Fatal Attraction-level damning to romance (great for your anti-date night!).
The Girl on the Train (2016)
Directed by Tate Taylor
influenced by Gone Girl (2014), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Zodiac (2007)
Themes Plot
Hawkins’ novel drew similarly unflattering “Gone Girl” comparisons when it was published last year, though both Gillian Flynn’s book and David Fincher’s razor-sharp movie adaptation possessed a surgically precise wit — a willingness to merge the preposterous and the satirical — that neither version of “The Girl on the Train” is equipped to match.
Imagine if “Gone Girl” had been developed as a toothless network television pilot — if it had been stripped of its subversive approach to gender dynamics, bludgeoned free of its sadistic gallows humor and shot like a very special episode of “NCIS: Suburbia.”
Though much has been written comparing this film to Fincher’s salacious Gone Girl , they couldn’t be more dissimilar in tone, context, and execution.
Rather than offer any positive definition of its heroines, the film saddles them with tragedies and ugly aspersions: Infertility and adultery are running themes, and the closest the screenplay gets to the zeitgeisty topicality of Gone Girl .
The novel is often compared to Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” another book about an unreliable narrator.
It's "Rear Window" crossed with a soap opera, a throwback to "Single White Female"-style preposterous thrillers, a light ripoff of satirical psychodrama "Gone Girl" and a lurid slice of faux-forbidden post-ironic exploitationist crap a la "Fifty Shades of Grey."
Never Back Down (2008)
Directed by Jeff Wadlow
influenced by Fight Club (1999)
Plot Themes Characters
A sort of teenage Fight Club, complete with daddy issues, Never Back Down is a slight refinement of the sort of picture that was ascendant in the '80s...
Tyler does not live on planet Earth, but planet Hollywood formula, where the storm clouds of Fight Club hang over the once charming but now seedy landscape of The Karate Kid.
The mixed martial arts flick Never Back Down borrows from other movies almost shamelessly â it's The Karate Kid meets Fight Club by way of Abercrombie & Fitch.
Here he's baby Brad Pitt in "Fight Club" - fatless, kind of dangerous but needy: attention is photosynthetic for him.
"Never Back Down" is a junior version of "Fight Club," only with no movie stars and different moves.
If you combined "The Karate Kid" with "Fight Club," then threw in a dash of "The O.C." and "You Got Served," then beat it with a stick until it was really stupid, you'd have something twice as smart as "Never Back Down."
Vertigo (1958)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Gone Girl (2014), Panic Room (2002), Fight Club (1999), The Game (1997)
Themes Characters Visuals Plot
There’s a symmetry between Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and “Fight Club”.
Nick Dunne borrows some from Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man and Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, never coming close to either actor’s performance.
Framed in close-up, the part running down the top of Pike’s ice-blonde hair instantly evokes Hitchcock’s famous image of Kim Novak’s bun in Vertigo; ripe with duplicity, the story’s playing field is already wildly unstable.
In all of this “Gone Girl” has a good deal in common with Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” which also offered its big revelation early on, and then toyed with viewers by becoming a dark study of romantic obsession.
It's a little like "Vertigo" (but with an entire, extra third act).
But the biggest star here may be Fincher’s surgically precise insight and silky style of suspense, which makes this film a modern companion to such classics as Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and Clouzot’s “Diabolique.”