Thriller movie specific narrative structures: Gone Girl

Thriller movie specific narrative structures: Gone Girl

The narrative structure of 2014's Gone Girl follows standard structure in its beginning with logical ordering of events and flashbacks to support what the narrator (Nick Dunne) is saying. However, this changes quite rapidly as it has a twist about a third of the way through that Amy Elliott-Dunne is actually alive and well after the start of the film pointing towards the conclusion that Amy was brutally killed and that the detectives and police should be looking for her body. This twist is revealed very early on and this breaks the norm of the twist in films as they often come at the ending.

Another element of this twist that breaks the norm is that Nick is completely unaware that his wife is alive and instead still believes that she is dead. This is abnormal as the twist in Thrillers often affects the main character in a direct manner and is often related closely to them as well as being based on their actions. After this, the movie starts to focus quite strongly on Amy and the abusive life that she created as a means to frame her husband for her murder. This element of the film breaks this genre from just a Thriller into the sub genre of psychological thriller as it follows the mind of a person suffering severe mental problems in detail with the audience aware of her broken mindset that is filled with evil preparation to frame her husband.

The film also has many moments of overlap to show the same event from the different perspectives of two different characters and keeps the audience in time with time stamps on screen that tell them how long Amy has been missing for.

This unique narrative structure has quite a shocking impact on the audience as they are unsuspecting of the different changes in the plot that are abnormal and out of place in comparison to other Thrillers. The director (David Fincher) is famous for Thrillers and so knew that the audience would be expecting him to keep to his standard narrative format. This changed acted as a 'trick' to add a unique feeling to Gone Girl that could be easily identified as a film where Fincher choose to change the norm and take on a new structure in one of his films.