At the start of the relationship portrayed in this movie your reaction is: "These people really need counseling." But then you realize the woman is bat-crap crazy, so what should the Ben Affleck character do? He is so wishy-washy that he probably gets what he deserves, doomed to living with a homicidal maniac. As entertainment, the film tried to maintain suspense but that vanished once the wife's role in the "disappearance" was revealed. Like the sexually-repressed girl in Roman Polanski's "Repulsion," you know she has problems (in "Repulsion" the girl's problem - which led to gruesome consequences-was androphobia, an abnormal fear of interaction with men). You hope "Gone Girl" will end with the woman being taken away to a mental institution and when it doesn't you feel disappointed--but then that's how the author wrote the story. Another film along this line is "Les Diaboliques" where two women conspire to murder an emotionally abusive man only to discover that his body has disappeared and there are reports of him being seen alive here and there. The ending is a surprise, but unlike "Gone Girl" the key to the mystery isn't given away so soon, hence that movie qualifies as a classic "Thriller" while "Gone Girl" is just fodder for psychology classes.
