Parents' Guide to

Gone Girl

By S. Jhoanna Robledo, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Violent, layered adaptation is dark but thrilling.

Movie R 2014 145 minutes
Gone Girl Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 16+

Based on 34 parent reviews

age 18+
good but gratuitous in spots we can't fully know people
age 15+

Intriguing and mysterious, yet sexually and violently graphic

Gone Girl (2014) follows Nick, a man struggling with his community and safety after he is blamed for his wife’s disappearance. Throughout the film expect tons of mature and graphic elements including numerous sex scenes, a scene of bloody violence, language and some disturbing depictions of staged rape. VIOLENCE: SEVERE Up to the end of the film, violence is tame and relatively mild. When the end does occur, however, there is a scene of bloody violence and numerous disturbing scenes. A man grabs and throws his wife onto the floor. A woman takes a hammer and smashes it into her face. A woman is shown draining blood from her arm and then smearing it all over the floor to stage a murder. A woman takes wine and rubs it onto her panties to make it look like blood from being raped. She crawls on the floor and violently screams so her (faked) agony can be recorded. Then, she takes a wine bottle and forces it into her vagina (below the camera) to make it appear she was raped. During rough sex, a woman takes a box cutter and slashes a man’s throat with it. His slashed open throat begins to profusely pour out and spray blood all over the woman and all over the bed and surroundings. The woman becomes soaked in blood along with the man’s body as blood sprays and pours everywhere out of the man’s graphically open neck. The scene is extremely bloody, and that is a complete understatement as blood is everywhere soaking both the man and the woman. The man’s neck is shown with the huge tear in the middle slashed open after he eventually chokes and dies. The woman who previously killed the man is shown soaked in blood for a prolonged period of time afterwards as she is questioned by police, walks through her driveway and washes all of it off in the shower. A man grabs a woman’s head and slams it against the wall while violently calling her a “c*nt”. LANGUAGE: SEVERE Around 47 uses of “f*ck”, 4 uses of “c*nt”, several uses of “sh*t”, “b*tch”, “p*ssy” and many other swears. SEXUAL CONTENT: SEVERE There are 5 sex scenes in the film and many other scenes of sexual content. A man is shown giving a woman oral sex. He is shown licking her genital area as she moans in pleasure on the bed. His head is shown between her legs as he lifts her panties above his head. No graphic nudity or any nudity at all is shown, and the scene is rather brief. A man and a woman are shown having sex against a table. Brief thrusting and moaning is depicted in non-graphic detail. A man and a woman begin to have sex on a couch. The man removes the woman’s top revealing her breasts as the woman straddles the man and the camera pans away. The next morning they are shown waking up after the sex. The woman is still naked with her bare breasts visible as they quickly dress. A man and a woman are shown having sex against a dresser. The man is briefly shown thrusting into the woman from behind, however this is shown from the waist up and isn’t graphic whatsoever. A woman uses a wine bottle to penetrate herself in order to stage rape evidence. This is below the camera and brief. A man and a woman begin to have sex. They fall into the bed where the woman pulls down the man’s pants revealing his buttocks shown in graphic, up close detail. They begin to have sex when the man pulls his pants down all the way and begins thrusting in between the woman’s legs in graphic detail with loud clapping and moaning and thrusting depicted as they have sex on the bed. The man continues thrusting until his throat is slit soaking them both in blood. The man is still nude and falls onto his stomach. His penis is briefly shown after he is dead, although it is covered in blood and is very hard to see. A man and a woman shower together. Both of their bare buttocks are shown and the woman’s bare breasts are shown as well from the side, although nipples are briefly visible. The man’s penis can also be very quickly glimpsed as well. Lots of sexual dialogue relating to sex, rape and other topics like oral sex, a woman waxing her “p*ssy”, a woman being raped, sodomized and put in a “spread eagle” position as bondage. Lots of references to “f*cking” and other sexual activities.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (34 ):
Kids say (44 ):

Director David Fincher's steady hand effortlessly guides GONE GIRL's transition from noir-ish page-turner to psychological thriller. It's a creepy, unsettling ride, testing audiences' loyalties and freaking them out a little, too, as they teeter to and fro. The book makes better work of asking salient questions about the nature of relationships; the movie amps up the source material's more tabloid-y side. It's violent, yes, but judiciously so, except for one scene that pushes boundaries -- perhaps so viewers can feel the impact, in full gruesomeness, of what humans are capable of, even if they don't appear to be.

In any case, we're riveted -- and not just because the framing and pacing and pretty much everything else about the movie are top-notch (except for the last 10 minutes, which feel tacked on), but because the leads are so compelling. Critics have long grumbled about Affleck's impenetrability. No matter who he's playing, we don't quite fully know what he's all about. But here he's totally present, and we sense his panic and confusion, anger and derision. It's quite a cocktail. But really, this is Pike's movie; in less able hands, the role of Amy, not to mention the scenery, would have been chewed to bits. Pike is precise, engaging, and perplexing. Even if you've already read the book, the film still holds your gaze.

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