Gerald's Game

GERALD’S GAME (Mike Flanagan, 2017)

With declining intimacy in their marriage in GERALD’S GAME, Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) go to an isolated lake house to spice up their relationship. She agrees to entertain his sexual wishes and consents to being handcuffed to the bed, but Jessie draws the line when he wants to play out a rape fantasy. Whether brought on by anger or something else, Gerald has a heart attack, collapses, and falls onto the floor when Jessie pushes him off of her. While her husband’s lack of movement and blood pooling around him is highly worrying, Jessie has a more pressing concern. She is shackled to the bed, cannot get free, and has no one nearby to hear her cries for help.

This desperate situation becomes more fraught when a hungry stray dog wanders into the bedroom. Seeking an escape of any kind, Jessie flees into her mind where she strategizes with herself, is taunted by her husband, remembers a painful child incident with her father (Henry Thomas), and avoids looking in the corner where she saw the death-like Moonlight Man (Carel Struycken).

The filmography of GERALD’S GAME director and co-writer Mike Flanagan reveals an aptitude for spinning psychological horror out of action largely confined to a house. Whether focusing on the brother and sister trying to capture evidence of an evil mirror in OCULUS or a deaf writer in the woods attempting to fend off a masked killer outside her home in HUSH, Flanagan demonstrates a knack for using location limitations to wring out the tension. The houses in these films don’t need to be inherently scary if they harbor an unhappy family history, expose vulnerabilities, or isolate, as in GERALD’S GAME. Although a dog licking its chops and the embodiment of death appear, the mind’s assessment of danger, coupled with its difficulty to produce a solution, generate the terror.

GERALD’S GAME shows that as a mental protection strategy, compartmentalization can be useful. Jessie bottles up her anxiety as best she can because it will help her survive. She summons strength by breaking things down into manageable bits and blocking out the rest as much as possible. Gugino’s performance relies on conveying an active mind scanning Jessie’s options for a solution. The character is bound and vulnerable, but Gugino displays the toughness and ingenuity that identify how constraints don’t have to make one weak.

The primary horror in this Stephen King adaptation is psychological. Flanagan expertly sets up the situation with a highly tense sequence that draws immediate identification with Jessie. While GERALD’S GAME pokes at mental discomfort, the director allows for one excellent gross-out moment that ought to provoke plenty of seat-squirming even if this film is only available to see on the smaller screens at home. In the film’s end Flanagan unnecessarily literalizes points, yet it’s hard to be too critical for the nice notes he plays regarding overcoming trauma.

Grade: B

Faster

FASTER (George Tillman Jr., 2010)

Identified simply as Driver, Dwayne Johnson's protagonist stews during his time behind bars as he plots his revenge in FASTER. The tag references his getaway vehicle driving duty with his brother’s bank robbing crew.

Driver’s skills behind the wheel help them elude the police, but their misdeeds catch up with them when a rival group of thieves invade their home to take the stolen money. They kill Driver’s brother and leave him for dead with a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Miraculously Driver survives the point blank shot and emerges from the injury with a nasty star-like scar, a metal plate, and a prison sentence.

Upon his release, Driver hunts down those who did him wrong and takes justice into his own hands. In pursuit are drug-addled cop (Billy Bob Thornton) and an assassin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) hired to take out Driver.

If FASTER were made 35 years ago or by the French or Japanese, it would be one of those grimy, long forgotten films you expect Quentin Tarantino to be touting. In the beginning this lean piece of revenge cinema looks like it might be that kind of rough around the edges B-movie whose fun derives from its no-nonsense approach and hard-hitting action. It’s streamlined to the point where most of the main characters don’t have names, just descriptors.

Johnson and Thornton lead a surprisingly strong cast, which also includes Carla Gugino as Thornton’s by-the-books co-investigator and Tom Berenger as the warden. For something that otherwise resembles countless direct-to-video titles, there’s a lot of talent on screen.

FASTER has collected the right pieces, but director George Tillman Jr. and screenwriters Tony and Joe Gayton struggle to assemble them properly. FASTER’S set-up feeds on the guilty pleasure of vengeance, yet it resists giving in to that impulse. The reason for the solemn tone eventually becomes clear and reveals the film to have more going on than expected, but with so much of FASTER dedicated to righteous rage, withholding visceral satisfaction weakens the action and the message.

Muddling matters is the three part structure divided among Driver, Cop, and Killer. The assassin’s scenes seem to belong to another film altogether and merely take away time and urgency from the main story. FASTER also could use a healthy dose of humor to lighten the burdened tone.

Ultimately FASTER is a film at conflict with its own nature. Too contemplative to indulge its pure screaming id and too vicious to be swayed by the bigger philosophical questions it proposes, FASTER doesn’t satisfy the appetite for enlightenment or destruction.

Grade: C-