“What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?”

These words open and close David Fincher’s 2014 hit movie “Gone Girl,” about the disappearance of Amy Elliot Dunne (Rosamund Pike).

On their fifth anniversary, Amy disappears, leaving only a shattered glass table and her husband Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) to file the missing person’s report. From there grows a story of a media circus and the cultural myths that entwine themselves in the institution of heterosexual marriage.

In the day of the internet, it is now nearly impossible to avoid spoilers. You know what Rosebud is, you know what happens to Ned Stark, the surprise and shock is gone because everyone wants to talk about it.

So I will lay out “Gone Girl’s” best element, right now: Amy Dunne is not dead.

She takes advantage of our myths about women, the violence done to them, and brutally turns them outwards as weapons. She takes her dehumanization, the myth of the “Cool Girl” and her own youth with her parents’ “Amazing Amy” books hanging over her head, and uses the consequences thereof to get what she wants.

A large part of the controversy surrounding the movie is based on how feminist the movie is. Is it feminist for Amy to make false rape allegations when rape is already under-prosecuted? 

No, and the film doesn’t present her as a good person for it; dedicated, but not good. Amy picked her modus operandi for a reason: a woman with degrees from Harvard and Yale would be very astute.

If you want better women in this movie, look at Detective Boney or Margot Dunne. Don’t look at the sociopath for moral guidance.

I would say the charge of misogyny is strange at best. Amy is not the only female character in this movie, though she truly does stand apart. We have Margot, her sister-in-law, who, while sympathetic to her brother, also holds him accountable for his adultery and his bad decisions. We have Detective Rhonda Boney, who does truly believe in “innocent until proven guilty,” unlike her partner who allows his belief in our cultural myths to make his decisions. 

Then there’s Andi, Nick Dunne’s mistress, who the movie never blames for Nick going astray; it’s all on Nick, a married man who should know better.

Outside the analysis of Amy, the movie didn’t inspire me. I wasn’t left in an amazed state that demanded I make all my friends watch it. This isn’t “Orange is the New Black.”

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did a tremendous job with the score, highlighting the suspicious nature with discordant music. Quite a number of times, the movie shocked me, particularly with sex scenes, which all the other reviews seemed to ignore. There is sex in this movie.

The acting in this movie is good. Outside the female cast, we also get great performances from Tyler Perry and Neil Patrick Harris.

Overall, the movie is a good watch, but I’d say watch it at home if you’re more inclined.