Gerald's Game (2017)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Jessie Burlingame	Carla Gugino
Gerald Burlingame	Bruce Greenwood	½
Moonlight Man	Carel Struycken
Tom, Jessie's father	Henry Thomas
Sally, Jessie's mother	Kate Siegel

Review

In Stephen King's thematic follow-up to Misery, it is the woman who finds herself tied to a bed after a rather unsuccessful sex game instigated by her husband. The novel was released in 1992, and the fact that the film version arrived only 25 years later, something of a record for a Stephen King movie, may safely be interpreted as an omen. Because how do you adapt a novel which primarily consists of a woman laying alone in a bed thinking about her life and pondering how to get out of it (the bed, not her life)? My short answer would be: you don't. But writer/director Mike Flanagan did, and in order to believe that he has succeeded, you have to really want to see it. The film's first 20 minutes or so are good: There's an ominous sexual/asexual chemistry between Carla Gugino as the woman and Bruce Greenwood as her husband. Their little altercation is also well-handled by Flanagan, but the problems arise once her inner monologues are to be visualized. To cut it short, this part doesn't work very well. And as the other elements in the script are presented, Gerald's Game feels increasingly contrived until the point where it's impossible not to think about the fact that you're indeed watching a movie.