Gerald's Game

Stephen King's books have a mixed appeal for me as I think as I have mentioned before.  I believe he is a superb writer and I savor the detail in which he probes into his characters' heads and builds his plots.  As a reader I can feel the joy he gets from the process of writing.  However I have little interest in the big supernatural elements of most of his stories as I find them difficult to relate to.  As such I have never read or seen a lot of his most famous works like The Stand, Pet Cemetary or IT.  I have read a lot of his short stories (Different Seasons and Just After Sunset collection), and also really like some of King's more grounded books like Cujo and Misery.  I also liked the Green Mile and 11.22.63 for their anthology structure and time travel respectively.

 In early 1993 I read the recently released Gerald's Game on the recommendation of a friend who  devoured King's books as they came out.  I thought it was an intriguing story with a great hook (a woman is handcuffed to a bed prior to sex in a remote cabin with her nasty husband who dies of a heart attack leaving her stuck there) that examined the psychological effect of her situation.  There was a clever resolution but King included had an extended epilogue that diluted some of the power of the story.  I also admired King more after reading it since I felt this was unlikely to ever be filmed so he was clearly exploring ideas and not just writing books hoping to get a good movie deal.  I do not agree with the term 'unfilmable' but the story did not seem very cinematic and in the book the lead character, Jessie, is topless throughout her ordeal which you could not do in a feature length film.  The book is much shorter than many of King's novels but still I could not imagine a 90-120 minute film with a woman handcuffed to a bed having thoughts and hallucinations.

In 2017 I saw an article on the movie website joblo.com with a link to a trailer for Gerald's Game starring Carla Gugino as Jessie and Bruce Greenwood as Gerald directed by Mike Flanagan.  I was unfamiliar with Flanagan's work but saw that he had made several well received horror films.  I admired that he had tackled this material but again wondered how he would make it work.  

When I saw the film would only appear on Netflix (which was kind of a new idea at the time) I felt this was a good idea.  Cinematic release campaigns are very expensive and Gerald's Game seemed to be a better fit for the small screen with its limited setting and number of characters.  I knew my kids were too young to watch it and my wife would not be interested in this type of film so I would need to catch it on my own sometime.  I hesitated for awhile because I had enjoyed the book and was a little reluctant to see a poor version onscreen but finally on a business trip last week I downloaded and watched it on an iPad.  

Spoilers below

Prior to watching I had some thoughts on the casting.  As I recalled from the book which I now read 30 years ago Jessie and Gerald were normal looking people and in Gerald's case quite a bit overweight.  Gugino and Greenwood are both incredibly attractive and Greenwood looks very strong.  Jessie has given up a career and Gerald is a successful attorney.  During filming Greenwood was 60 and Gugino was 45 which makes them, if memory serves, older than their literary counterparts but as the story is presented, age appropriate.  Due to Gerald's success it feels right he should be at about the height of his career and Greenwood has a powerful voice and authority about him (he's played the U.S. President in three different films) though I expected it to be a brief role given how early in the story Gerald dies.  Gugino struck me as interesting casting as in the films I have seen her in (I rarely watched Spin City in which she appeared in the first season) she usually plays characters who stand strong and know their place in life.  Jessie starts the story as a submissive character who in confronting this awful situation finally finds her strength and reconciles a horrifying incident in her past.  In the film Jessie is old enough that her youth has passed but has plenty of time for a second act in which she can redefine herself.  The age difference between them is fitting that Gerald might have seen Jessie as a trophy wife whereas Jessie has been drawn to older men as a result of an experience with her father.  

The opening title sequence foreshadows the story with Jessie and Gerald separately placing items in an overnight bag for their weekend away at the cabin.  Three details stick out in retrospect.  The bag is on a bed, which is different than the one at the cabin but lit in a similar way, Jessie packs a sexy nightgown (Flanagan wisely has Jessie wear that for her ordeal) and Gerald packs the handcuffs which the camera then zooms in on.

While driving to the cabin Jessie tries to be relaxed but looks uncomfortable and only lets her guard down when she sees the dog which she later tries to feed.  Flanagan shows Jessie noticing the door has been left open but as she is embracing Gerald she is too afraid to close it for fear of upsetting her delicate husband.  When the big scene comes Gugino's eyes perfectly captures Jessie's barely suppressed fear of the handcuffs mixed with her desire to please her husband in the moment.  

Flanagan changes the big scene from the book by both softening and making it more complex.  In the book Gerald is more monstrous and decides to rape Jessie and she fights back and kicks him in the stomach and groin and he has the heart attack.  In Flanagan's version Gerald is playing a rape fantasy to deal with sex issues and the viagra he takes on top of it causes the heart attack.  He is cruel to Jessie and refuses to uncuff her but it seems like it is part of his role playing.  In this version Gerald is a narcissistic jerk but probably would have uncuffed Jessie had he not died, and in fact looked to be softening slightly right before the heart attack hits.  It is hinted that if he would just talk to Jessie and work with her they could possibly overcome this but Gerald deal with his vulnerabilities by becoming more aggressive.

Gugino is fabulous in this scene going from trying to look sexy to fighting being scared of the cuffs and the whole scenario while trying to play along but failing miserably.  When Gerald tries the fantasy a second time she bites him out of instinct which shows her to be a lot more resilient than she might initially believe.  When Gerald collapses on top of her Jessie has to both react to the shock and the desperation to move him.  Gugino believably shows how hard it must be for her to raise him off her with just her legs which then sends Gerald to the floor.  

Flanagan is now into the meat of the story which has the task of living up to this powerful opening.  There are about 90 minutes to go and Jessie is cuffed to the bed.   As a viewer I wondered how Flanagan would sustain interest.  It turns out he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve.

For one Gugino modulates Jessie's stages of panic.  If she was the frantic the entire time it would get tiresome quickly but in some moments Jessie is energetic (such as when the dog first approaches Gerald's body) and in others, such as when the "Moonlight Man" is present, she is more frozen with fear.  

In another narrative move Jessie's thoughts come to her through hallucinating a revived Gerald and a stronger version of herself (I'll call them Jesse 2 and Gerald 2).  This allows us to see Jessie interact with others as opposed to just herself.  Gerald 2 looks and sounds like Gerald (which gives Greenwood a much bigger role in the film than I expected) but really is expressing all of Jessie's scared and negative thoughts and provides exposition and backstory.  Jessie 2 is direct and gives helpful information and is what Jessie is drawing upon to get through this.  

Flanagan and cinematographer Michael Fimognari also find many different angles to shoot the bed from so even though the bulk of the story takes place in one room each scene has its own flavor.  

Flanagan handles the stray dog, which has echoes of Cujo (even jokingly referenced by Gerald 2) more delicately in the film but not necessarily to the film's benefit.  The dog comes in the open door and starts to lick Gerald's blood and gradually gets a taste for humans after he starts to eat Gerald's corpse.  The film foreshadows this early by Gerald nearly running over the dog while it is eating roadkill, not know he himself will be its next meal.  But while Jessie is nervous when the dog first comes in she actually seems pretty relaxed with it there for the most part, until one moment when she wakes up to it biting her.  As I recall in the book King captures the vulnerability of Jessie being afraid of getting eaten alive by the dog more vividly which is a more direct factor in her fighting to escape her predicament.  Here the dog is a threat but so are other things.  In the book the dog also has more of a tragic backstory as he was a pet who was abandoned.  After the events of the story the dog is hunted down and killed because now he was a danger to humans having partially eaten one.  In the film we never learn what happens to the dog after Jessie leaves the house.

The flashback to Jessie's youth is handled as tastefully as possible which still implying the horror as it involves a form of sexual abuse.  As in the book Jessie's mother is impatient with her which causes Jessie to be closer to her father who is kinder but exploits that by having her sit on his lap while he masturbates during a solar eclipse (which also occurs in the story Dolores Claiborne).  Flanagan shows everything from Jessie's perspective who does not really realize what is going on but knows that it is wrong.  The red from the eclipse gives the sensation that Jessie is entering Hell and her father is a form of Satan.  Henry Thomas plays the father as a weak manipulative man who ruins any sense of security Jessie might have had by both taking this act and then in an extended scene afterwards gaslights her to make sure she does not tell her mother.  It is suggested that this marriage is also troubled which might be her father's way of justifying the act.  The odd thing is it only happens once, when any study of this type of action usually would involve repeated incidents, though the story tries to cover this by saying it was the eclipse that turned him on.  Either way it is awful and leaves a devastating impact on Jessie's life is as she marries a man who is a lot like her father.  Notably the Sam Cooke song (Bring It On Home To Me) that plays on the radio during the act is the same one Jessie turns off in the car early in the film (while heading to a similar lake house for an uncomfortable sexual scenario), clearly wanting to shut out the memory.

Most Stephen King films have a stomach churning scene (ie the hobbling scene in Misery, Del's execution without the sponge in Green Mile) and Gerald's Game faithfully adapts Jessie's escape by slashing her right wrist to release the skin so she can pull her hand through through the cuff.  In the book this goes on for a few pages and in the film it is an extended scene where Jessie and Jessie 2 come up with the plan, Jessie gathers her courage and then proceeds.  The conversation beforehand provides needed exposition as Jessie is already weak and now will go through extensive blood loss which she will have to stop before she bleeds to death.  The scene is uncomfortable as Jessie has to go through several steps (which I will not repeat here) all while courageously watching to make sure she completes them properly.  Gugino realistically portrays the pain as much worse than she imagined but also determined to free herself.  The scene is wisely left unscored and without much sound design.  Once she is out of the cuff her hand is realistically useless and Flanagan and Gugino show that the now severely weakened Jessie needs to move the bed to reach the keys and use her mouth to uncuff her left hand and gradually free herself.  The conflicting dynamic is fun as Jessie has to fight off fainting spells while using her occasional adrenaline rushes to get herself to safety.  The dog, who is now attracted to human flesh, goes after Jessie's bloody hand and probably saves her life by waking her up after she first collapses.  

The film missteps anytime it uses the Moonlight Man, who looks like a vision of death but turns out to be a disfigured grave robber named who is escalating into other more disgusting crimes.  I had forgotten this character from the book because his presence is out of place in this story as he only represents an opaque threat.  The finale when Jessie stands up to him in the courtroom feels false as the character looks silly and Jessie interrupting a courtroom proceeding would probably get her in trouble.  A better way to put Jessie's demons would be if her father was still alive and she had confronted him and Joubert were removed entirely.  However the closing shot of Jessie walking comfortably down the street into a sunnier future does feel cathartic and earned.    

Despite the final misstep Gerald's Game is a successful screen adaptation of an intriguing and disturbing premise.  Gugino is terrific in a brave and challenging role (and arguably dual) role of a damaged woman who finds incredible strength in a crisis and then uses it to help others.  ***