TRAPPED BY CHOICE
Horror films are of many kinds. Some go the good-and-evil route, relying on the ‘God vs the Devil’ trope for thrills. Others are more subtle, relying on the fear of the unknown to get their audiences screaming. And then there are those that don’t even bill themselves as horror, though they’re most assuredly within that genre. Gerald’s Game is one of the latter—definitely a horror flick, though without the usual ghostly accessories. Director Mike Flanagan, who excels at psychological horror (remember Oculus?), takes up the Stephen King book of the same name and puts together a movie guaranteed to put viewers off romantic getaways for a long, long time.
Newly released on Netflix, Gerald’s Game settles into a room with Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood), who have left town for a remote getaway in the hope of reviving their sex life. But Jessie isn’t expecting what Gerald has in store—BDSM with real handcuffs. And even as viewers squirm at the claustrophobia-inducing sight of a woman in handcuffs at the mercy of a man who appears convinced that ‘no’ means ‘yes’, Gerald has a heart attack and collapses—on top of Jessie.
The rest of the film leaves viewers trapped with Jessie as she tries to escape the handcuffs while keeping herself from passing out. The room seems designed to heighten the sense of panic at being trapped—though Jessie is handcuffed, sunlight streams through curtained French windows, an open door is only a few feet away and her phone is just inches out of reach. Trapped in the room, Jessie has several flashbacks, revealing to audiences the abuse she suffered as a child.
Gugino and Greenwood’s performances are smoothly delivered. There are no unreal moments and that is what works for the film. Jessie’s hallucinations as she tries to defend her decisions to ignore Gerald’s toxic masculinity or her father’s manipulative abuse are eerily familiar. If nothing else, this is a film about consent and the lies that most women tell themselves to normalise physical and emotional abuse. We expect abuse to be obvious like the deformed figure of death in Gerald’s Game—an aberration. But in reality, it creeps insidiously into our lives with the men who claim to love us.