Top 5 Reasons Why Gerald's Game Is Trending

Part of what makes this psychological thriller so terrifying is that it remains mostly grounded in the realm of plausibility. Looking to rekindle the spark in their struggling marriage, Carla Gugino's Jessie and Bruce Greenwood's Gerald travel to a secluded lake house for a kinky getaway. After handcuffing his wife to the bedposts, Gerald suffers a heart attack and drops dead, leaving the isolated Jessie helplessly trapped. Much like “Saw,” “127 Hours,” or “Buried,” this a film that really puts the audience in the main character’s shoes, making us contemplate what we’d do under these circumstances. It’s easy to identify with Jessie as a protagonist throughout her ordeal, which takes us to some deeply horrific, nightmare-inducing places.

While the 1992 novel isn’t without its fans, a lot of people wrote off “Gerald’s Game” as melodramatic, exploitative, and certainly not one of King’s best works. But this film adaptation has received rave reviews across the board, scoring a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Many critics claimed the film seriously improves upon the book. On paper, spending the majority of a story restrained to a bed might not seem especially gripping (pun intended). If anything, it sounds kind of static. By taking the initial framework King laid out, however, the filmmakers built something both visually arresting and emotionally involving..

Carla Gugino has been doing strong work in both movies and television for almost three decades. Since this character actress often usually appears as part of an ensemble, though, she’s never quite become a household name. Gugino gets to take center stage in “Gerald’s Game,” the premise offering a terrific showcase for her acting chops. In addition to harrowingly portraying her character’s physical struggles, she does a stellar job at bringing out Jessie’s inner demons as she deals with both her current predicament and past life turmoil. Between Gugino’s bravura performance and Mike Flanagan’s fearless direction, we truly delve deep into Jessie’s psyche. What we find inside is an authentic, and unsettling portrait of what happens to people when they keep trauma locked up.

With Halloween around the corner, many Netflix subscribers are in the mood for something spooky and suspenseful, and a Stephen King adaptation perfectly fits the bill. Alas, “The Shining,” “Misery,” and “Carrie” are all absent from the Netflix library as of now. Fortunately, “Gerald’s Game” has all the makings of a modern horror classic and is gets under your skin in all the right ways. Of course, if some of the graphic imagery is too much for you to handle, at least Netflix comes equipped with a fast-forward feature. In any case, it’s easily the best Stephen King movie currently available on the streaming service. Sorry, “Children of the Corn,” there’s no competition here.

While “The Dark Tower” adaptation was a letdown, 2017 has been an otherwise banner year for Stephen King on film. “1922,” another Netflix original film based on his work, earned solid reviews following its debut at Fantastic Fest, the annual Texas genre movie showcase. On the big screen, Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of “It” has dominated the box office, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated horror movie ever. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that critics and audiences are also over the moon for “Gerald’s Game.” Even King is a fan, describing a rough cut he saw as “hypnotic, horrifying, and terrific.” That’s pretty powerful stuff coming from the master, as King can get rather snippy and critical whenever another artist tries to interpret his work.