Gerald's Game (film)

Gerald's Game is a 2017 American psychological horror thriller film directed and edited by Mike Flanagan, and screenplay written by Flanagan with Jeff Howard. It is based on Stephen King's 1992 novel of the same name, long thought to be unfilmable. The film stars Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood as a married couple who arrive at an isolated house for a holiday. When the husband dies of a sudden heart attack, his wife, left handcuffed to the bed without the key and with little hope of rescue, must find a way to survive, all while battling her inner demons.

Gerald's Game had its world premiere at BFI Southbank on September 19, 2017, and was released on September 29, 2017, by Netflix. It received very positive reviews from critics, who lauded Gugino's performance; Flanagan's direction, and the film's themes and their treatment, were also singled out.

Plot
Jessie and Gerald Burlingame arrive at an isolated lake house in Fairhope, Alabama, for a romantic getaway. They come across a stray dog on the drive over; Jessie wants to help it but Gerald objects. While Gerald takes Viagra, Jessie cuts up a raw steak from the refrigerator and calls out for the dog to eat it. Gerald sees this and chastises her for it as the steak was expensive Kobe beef, but decides to allow her to leave the steak out. They enter the house and Gerald leaves the door open behind them. Inside, she changes into a new slip and Gerald restrains her with a set of handcuffs locked to the bedposts. He begins to enact a stranger rape fantasy; she half-heartedly plays along but becomes uncomfortable, telling him to stop and uncuff her. After a heated argument in which he accuses her of not trying to rekindle their relationship, Gerald dies of a heart attack, falling on top of Jessie and leaving her trapped in the handcuffs.

A few hours pass. The dog enters through the open door of the house. Jessie tries to scare it away, but it bites a chunk out of Gerald's arm and eats it. Gerald stands up and begins talking; when Jessie notices his body remains on the floor, she realizes she is hallucinating. He taunts her about the truths of their strained marriage and his erectile dysfunction. He informs her that she is beginning to suffer from dehydration and fatigue. Jessie hallucinates a more self-assured version of herself, who explains things about her and Gerald that she never had the courage to acknowledge. The two hallucinations trigger her to remember the glass of water Gerald had left on the shelf above the bed, which she is able to reach; when she cannot drink it, she rolls the shopping tag she had torn from her slip into a drinking straw to reach the water.

Jessie falls asleep. The dog appears to be startled by footsteps in the house and runs out of the house barking. Jessie wakes up in the dark, and sees a deformed obscured figure who reveals a bag of bones and trinkets. She refuses to believe the figure is real but Gerald says the figure is Death waiting to take her, pointing out that he must have been real because the dog ran out of the house. Gerald begins to call Jessie "Mouse", which triggers a memory of her father Tom, who affectionately referred to her as "Mouse". When she was 12, her family went on a vacation to see a solar eclipse from a boat. Jessie was scared of going on the water, so she chose to stay back to her mother's frustration and Tom agreed to watch her while the rest of her family went out on the boat. During the eclipse, Tom asked Jessie to sit on his lap, supposedly reminiscing about Jessie's early childhood, but began masturbating while Jessie was on his lap watching the eclipse. Tom manipulated Jessie afterward to cover up the abuse, pretending that he intended to tell her mother what happened but subtly implying that her mother would blame Jessie for it. Near the end of their conversation, he admitted that he did a "shameful thing", but could not look at her when saying that. Gerald points out that Jessie never told her about this. Gerald and hallucination Jessie taunt that she never recovered from the assault, and that she married a man just like her father.

During her childhood memory, Jessie hallucinates the deformed man licking her foot. She comes to and realizes it was the dog licking her foot and kicks it away. Gerald points out that it is only a matter of time before the dog stops eating his dead body and goes for hers. Gerald calls the deformed man "the man made of moonlight", and points out a bloody footprint on the floor, making Jessie realize the figure may have been real.

Jessie speaks to her child persona, who asks her to remember what happened afterwards. She recalls eating dinner with her family and gripping a water glass so tight that it shattered and cut her hand in the process after her mother asked how her time was with Tom while everyone else was on the boat. Her mother is shocked and seems to suspect something happened, but still does nothing, and Tom takes her aside to clean up her wound. In present day, Jessie hallucinates Tom and her younger self tending to the wound in the sink nearby the bed, and she realizes the only way to escape is to break the water glass, cut her wrist and use the blood as lubricant to free one of her hands from the cuff. She smashes the water glass, cuts her wrist, and peels back the skin, allowing her bloody hand to slip through the cuff. She first reaches for the phone only to see that the battery is dead. She reaches the key and unlocks her other hand. She bandages her wrist with sanitary pads but passes out from blood loss and fatigue. When she awakes, the "man made of moonlight" is at the end of the hall. Delirious, she removes her wedding ring and gives it to him for his trinket bag before leaving. She makes it to her car and drives away but hallucinates the deformed figure again, who whispers "Mouse" into her ear, and crashes into a tree. People from a nearby house emerge to help.

Six months later, Jessie is writing a letter to her 12-year-old self. She describes how she had pretended to have amnesia over the ordeal of being trapped, avoiding painful questions. She used some of Gerald's life insurance to start a foundation for victims of sexual abuse, but each night the "man made of moonlight" still appears before her as she falls asleep. She is disturbed by the fact that despite the police thoroughly searching the lake house, they were never able to find her wedding ring. She learns from the news that the "man made of moonlight" was in fact a serial killer and grave robber with acromegaly called Raymond Andrew Joubert, and assaults men while mutilating them, explaining why he did not harm Jessie in the house and why Gerald's ears were missing.

Jessie arrives at court as Joubert is being arraigned. He breaks free of his handcuffs and quotes what she said before leaving the house, mocking her and indicating that he was in fact there at the time. Seeing Gerald and her father in him, she tells him, "You're so much smaller than I remember", and leaves triumphantly.

Cast

 * Carla Gugino as Jessie Burlingame
 * Chiara Aurelia as "Mouse" (Young Jessie)
 * Bruce Greenwood as Gerald Burlingame, Jessie's husband
 * Carel Struycken as "Moonlight Man" / Raymond Andrew Joubert
 * Henry Thomas as Tom, Jessie's father
 * Kate Siegel as Sally, Jessie's mother
 * Adalyn Jones as Maddie, Jessie's sister
 * Bryce Harper as James, Jessie's brother

Development
On May 19, 2014, Deadline Hollywood reported that Mike Flanagan had been set to direct a film adaptation of Stephen King's suspense thriller novel Gerald's Game, scripted by Jeff Howard. Trevor Macy produced the film through Intrepid Pictures.

In an interview with Rue Morgue in September 2016, Flanagan stated that the film adaptation would be released by Netflix.

Casting
Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood were cast to play Jessie and Gerald Burlingame, along with Henry Thomas, Carel Struycken, Kate Siegel, and Chiara Aurelia.

Filming
Principal photography on the film began on October 17, 2016, in Mobile, Alabama.

Release
The film was released on September 29, 2017, by Netflix.

Critical reception
Gerald's Game received positive reviews. On review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 79 reviews, with an average rating of 7.60/10. The website's critics consensus states, "Carla Gugino carries Gerald's Game small-scale suspense with a career-defining performance." At Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 77 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Stephen King called the film "hypnotic, horrifying and terrific" after watching the rough cut.