If you watched the movie, you know the set-up: Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) go to their vacation homefor a weekend. Shorthand, anytime Joubert appears in the red light of the eclipse or with supernaturally bright eyes, this is safely in Jessie's head; her mind's taken his image and is using it as an emblem of her fear. That's so interesting. This apparition is what she refers to as the Moonlight Man. When . Gerald's Game, Netflix's new Stephen King movie, is a very unexpected film. Its hands are almost claws, and they hold a bag filled with bones and trinkets. Inspired by her memory of the eclipse, in which her father warned her not to cut herself on the smoked glass panes they used as eclipse viewers, Jessie breaks the water glass and uses a sharp shard to slice her wrist, giving herself a degloving injury to lubricate her skin enough to slide her right hand from the cuff. The shock causes him to have a fatal heart attack. The Walking Dead: Did the Carol/Morgan Scene Go Too Far? Over time he moves on to killing people and chopping off their body parts. Many victims of such abuse blame themselves, especially when the abuse is at the hands of a loved one. [1] The story is about a woman whose husband dies of a heart attack while she is handcuffed to a bed, and, following the subsequent realization that she is trapped with little hope of rescue, begins to let the voices inside her head take over. They had to say it. Jessies emotions, her excuses, and her inward justification are imperative to the novel and her progression as a character. There's no Maine setting, no child with fantastical powers, no overly sadistic bullies - not even a struggling writer recovering from addiction trying to work through their block. He once asked Tom Cruise about his supposedly fake-butt in Valkyrie (he swore it was all real). Yet another King novel that featured sexual violence and a cover-up,Bag of Bones,gets a nod when Jessie says about the Moonlight Man, "My visitor with the bag of bones.". Realizing her husband is deliberately feigning ignorance and that he plans to rape her, Jessie lashes out, kicking Gerald in the stomach and groin. Somewhat amazingly, a (very faithful . Gerald and Jessie number 2 taunt that she never recovered from the assault, and that she married a man just like her father. It was really amazing to watch. Jessie blames herself for her fathers actions: she feels she tempted him, and she believes that she is at fault. But in spite of its straightforward-sounding story, there is a lot more to unpack in Gerald's Game than there seems to be on the surface. Yeah, and it was fun because we always looked at Jessie 2 as who Jessie needed to turn into by the end of this. Jessie and Gerald Burlingame arrive at an isolated lake house in Fairhope, Alabama for a romantic getaway. The mother of one of . Jessie mentions having gotten her period the month before her father molested her, and this event also caused major trauma in King's Carrie. And yet what it does have is a complex, human story underpinning the horror-inflected plot. In May 2014, Deadline Hollywood reported that Mike Flanagan had been set to direct a film adaptation. After that, he proceeds to touch himself fully aware that Jessie knows what hes doing. The blurred lines and harsh truths of Kings book portray such a real situation. When Gerald calls himself "Daddy," Jessie has a panic attack and bites Gerald in self-defense. I couldn't imagine anything more graphic than the way Stephen King described the hand scene. Shes not imagining him. Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter and be the first to know whenever we publish a new article! In Gerald's Game, Jessie Burlingame becomes our window into a world that has been darkened by broken trust and a darkened sun. This paper tag will be an actual lifesaver before long. Gerald himself ends up dead, and protagonist Jessie Burlingame finds herself in a whole heap of trouble when she's still handcuffed to the bed. A nearby couple rescues her. I can handle it. Six months later, Jessie is writing a letter to her 12-year-old self. Click to browse all his film articles. At first, Jessie is only horrified at her husband's death and fears the humiliation of being discovered semi-naked and handcuffed, but she quickly realizes the situation is far more dire: it is unlikely that she or Gerald will be missed for several days, no one will think to look for them at the lake house, and all the usual lake residents have gone for the season. Seeing Gerald and her father in him, she tells him, "You're so much smaller than I remember", and leaves triumphantly. 13M views 5 years ago Breaking free will require more than keeping her sanity. Jessie has her chance to confront her final tormentor, and does so on Joubert's first day in court. And now, in the midst of Gerald's game, she wants to stop, but he won't. Her path out of the house is blocked by the Moonlight Man, who she still thinks is a hallucination. Everything else, however, appears to be real. Forcing children to keep terrible secrets is a metaphorical imprisonment that can affect them for the rest of their lives, and Gerald's Game details in stark relief just how dangerous and damaging this dynamic can be, both physically and psychologically. The event took place during a solar eclipse the summer of 1962 in the original novel, but with the movie being set in present day, the same connection can't directly be drawn. Yes. (Photo: Intrepid Pictures/Netflix) Warning: This post contains spoilers for the film version of Gerald's Game. Carla and I talk a lot about how different they were at the start but that the movie was about Jessie in the bed turning into this other version, so that that would be the version of her that walks out of the courtroom in the end. She decides that shes going for Raymonds arraignment. That was some of my favorite stuff, watching those two halves collide which is all Carla. His bag of bones is open and Jessie puts her wedding ring inside, saying once again, "You're not real. He is a crypt creeper who vandalizes graveyards by breaking into mausoleums and stealing jewelry. The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. I was kind of hoping against hope there would be a secret Delores Claiborne adaptation that would come out sometime in the next six months that could really just link it all together officially for the cinematic world. Gerald's Game is a 2017 American psychological horror thriller film directed and edited by Mike Flanagan, and screenplay written by Flanagan with Jeff Howard. He begins to enact a stranger rape fantasy; she half-heartedly plays along but soon becomes uncomfortable, telling him to stop and uncuff her. Jessie confronted Joubert at his court hearing, where Joubert mocked her "made of moonlight" statement, confirming that the encounter really occurred and causing Jessie to spit in his face. He responds, "Everything dies. All things serve the Beam." I just have nothing but intense admiration for her. On their way to the lake house the handsome couple listen to Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home to Me" in the car as Gerald works to get his wife in the mood attempts that she quietly rebuffs, moving his hand away from her thigh and turning the music off. Who would rescue Gerald when he was alone? Only on Netflix." [Full. The indecision of the protagonist and the mental games she must traverse help the audience to understand the deep repression of a terrible memory, thus providing insight to non-victims and, hopefully, a call to self-advocacy for those still alone in their suffering. From the moment we enter into the flashback, we have an idea of what is about to happen. She was really put through the wringer. Originally, the book was intended to be a companion piece to King's novel Dolores Claiborne, with the connecting theme of two women in crisis caught in the path of an eclipse, though this aspect was greatly reduced by the time the books were published. But she's also been fighting to avoid addressing the problems with her marriage; the much older lawyer Gerald is quite evidently a father substitute, and on a more base level she's been hiding the true nature of their fractured relationship from herself for years. When she returns to the present, she realizes she's going to have to cut that same hand again in order to escape. The female protagonist is called Jessie. Anybody other than Carla might've had a really hard time making it all come together as organically as she did. It needed to be in someone's mouth. One of the things about that epilogue is that without seeing the effects that this experience has had on her life and without giving her a moment to confront not only Joubert but Joubert to me is kind of a conglomerate of all the crimes that have been committed against her by the men in the movie, wrapped up into one diseased figure. "The people who were supposed to protect you from monsters turned out to be monsters themselves, and they almost killed you," Jessie reflects. Based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, 'Gerald's Game' revolves around a romantic get-away gone wrong and a captive woman's attempts to evade "Death". Related: Gerald's Game: What is Netflix's New Stephen King Movie? Of course, Cujo was right there to be had. This is a reference to The Dark Tower series and its Beam holding the universe together, as well as a double entendre pointing to the beam of wood over Jessie's head that supports the lifesaving glass of water. [2] In an interview with Rue Morgue in September 2016, Flanagan said that the film adaptation would premiere on Netflix. His original intention was to pair the story with Dolores Claiborne (1992) as they both take place at (the fictional) Dark Score Lake during a full solar eclipse. "He didn't rape me," Jessie says to herself about that fateful day with her dad during the eclipse. Bruce Greenwood and Carla Gugino in Gerald's Game. For Jessie, the fear is spawned by being bound and alone, with only the repressed terror of her past. Childhood trauma is one of Stephen King's major overarching themes, and Gerald's Game explores it with empathy and compassion. It's funny, the epilogue was one of the most polarizing aspects of the book. That was really the heart of it. She sees her father and husband's faces in Joubert's as she stares him down. Years later, she marries a person much older than her because its the only dynamic shes ever known. Jessie tries to scare it away, but it bites a chunk out of Gerald's arm and eats it. And, you can sit there and power through three or four episodes at a time. While Jessie frantically explores and rejects plans, a combination of panic and thirst causes her to hallucinate voices: "The Goodwife" or "Goody Burlingame," a Puritanical version of herself that undermines her escape attempts by insisting things will be fine and that she should wait to be rescued; "Punkin," a representation of Jessie as a 10-year-old girl; Ruth Neary, a college roommate whom Jessie abandoned after a conversation that strayed dangerously close to uncovering Jessie's childhood; and Nora, Jessie's former psychologist, whom Jessie likewise abandoned when Nora questioned Jessie's relationship with her father. Certainly, this is a stark criticism when speaking of a Stephen King adaptation. The bone-chilling Gerald's Game was released on Netflix in 2017, and was based on Stephen King's 1992 book of the same name. The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user. I can't imagine anyone else playing the part. As they near their remote lakefront cabin, Gerald almost runs over a stray German shepherd chowing down on roadkill. But these banal actions quickly take a menacing turn with the addition of two police-grade sets of handcuffs that Gerald lovingly places into his satchel. King's novels have seen numerous adaptations on screen. We are shown a younger Jessie walking away as the eclipse clears and this metaphorically states that her days are going to be brighter going forward. You can binge it which means that you're not in the business of creating these isolated little pockets of tension. He is a big fan of all things horror, especially Stephen King and the haunted house horror genre. Because Gerald's ghost had taunted her about her lack of emotional connection and intimacy with anyone else, in particular friendships, Jessie begins opening up about her childhood and even starts a foundation to help abused kids. I imagine she had a double doing her lines when she was attached to the bed. However, when Jessie sees Gerald's handcuffs she balks, having been expecting the toy kind with fur that doesn't require a key. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD) is a brain disorder that is caused by stress and some sort of trauma. In an attempt to rekindle the flames with a little kink, Gerald handcuffs Jessie to the bed and starts role-playing a rape fantasy that his wife does not consent to. Inside, she changes into a new slip and Gerald restrains her with a set of handcuffs locked to the bedposts. But what about that ending? Cujo is an obvious callout when there's a dog in a Stephen King story. . The book is dedicated to King's wife Tabitha and her five sisters. Gerald's Game 2017 | Maturity Rating: 16+ | 1h 43m | Horror When her husband's sex game goes wrong, Jessie -- handcuffed to a bed in a remote lake house -- faces warped visions, dark secrets and a dire choice. When she confronts him at his arraignment, however, we learn they may share a strange connection; upon seeing her, he breaks out of his handcuffs and says "you're not real, you're only made of moonlight" - exactly what she thought he was. Oh, and if this article doesnt answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and Ill get you the answer. Hes 7 feet tall and has an enlarged forehead and has longish arms. It's also impossible to ignore the way Jessie's mom openly despised her and was verbally abusive, creating an environment that put her in competition with Jessie, leaving Jessie with no other parental figure to turn to. She kicks him off, but before. But saying this shes taking back control. Oh absolutely. Gerald's Game is a story about all-too-human monsters Gerald is an insidious manipulator who controls Jessie in ways so subtle she doesn't realize until it's too late to escape. Gerald is an insidious manipulator who controls Jessie in ways so subtle she doesn't realize until it's too late to escape. My name is Jessica. Gerald pops another Viagra and Jessie starts to look properly frightened. There's a really critical nod to The Dark Tower that happens toward the end of the movie in a line that Bruce Greenwood says to Carla, which is "All things serve the beam." She describes how she had pretended to have amnesia over the ordeal of being trapped, avoiding painful questions. "Jessie,. Jessie also remembers an inexplicable event in the aftermath of the abuse, during which she experienced a momentary psychic connection with an unknown woman. With the insurance money, Jessie starts a foundation to help young boys and girls like her. Sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a new trauma in order for old traumas to resurface and bring alongan opportunity to heal. Her relationship with her pregnant mother Sally (Kate Seigel) was strained, and Sally made no secret of how much she disliked her daughter. But in reality, its Raymond getting another piece of jewelry for his collection. Jessie falls asleep, wakes up in the dark, and sees a deformed obscured figure who reveals a bag of bones and trinkets. In the film, the assault is presented as morally simple: it feels wrong immediately, and young Jessie doesnt need to go through years of turmoil to know that what has happened to her is not right. In her attempt to wake him, Gerald falls from the bed onto the tile floor and cracks his head. Jessie arrives at court as the moonlight man is being sentenced. Movie Explained (2017 Plot And Ending), Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013) : Movie Plot Ending Explained, Time Loop Movies A Definitive 2023 List (Live The Same Day Over), Tomb Raider (2018) : Movie Explained In Short. That death is not coming to claim his runaway bride. When she probes for the reason behind this self-destructive belief, Jessie is able to recall a long-repressed memory of being sexually abused by her father during a solar eclipse when Jessie was ten. Gerald, a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality, has been able to reinvigorate the couple's sex life by handcuffing Jessie to the bed. [1] To avoid too many questions from the press, she lies saying she had amnesia and couldnt recollect anything. I think the biggest difference for me between the book Gerald's Game and the movie is I'm 25 years older, but it's also that I watched the movie in a straight shot. Equally importantly, Gerald's Game is about a sex game gone terribly wrong, resulting in Jessie's husband's death and leaving Jessie handcuffed naked to their bed. Spoilers ahead! Jessie did not want join her mother and her siblings on the day of eclipse and wanted to stay with her father. Gerald's Game premiered on Netflix over the weekend, so now wecan talk about spoilers. We see Jessie again six months after her ordeal. We are exalted when she comes to face the truth and we feel liberated, with her, when she finally accepts her fathers role. You didn't get rejected . I think we were overly cautious of how we dealt with her because at the end of the day, she had a complete grasp of it and got a little impatient with our squeamishness. 391K views 5 years ago "Breaking free will require more than keeping her sanity. As a result, she is in an unhappy marriage as a trophy wife. Screen Rant's Managing Editor, Alex Leadbeater has been covering film online since 2012 and been a permanent fixture of SR since 2016. It received very positive reviews from critics, who lauded Gugino's performance; Flanagan's direction, and the film's themes and their treatment, were also singled out. We all know that the night is always scarier than the day naturally because the unknown, unseen elements are more significant. He started as a graveyard vandal in Alabama, stealing jewelry from recently buried corpses, then escalated, desecrating bodies and eventually stealing various parts of the anatomy - and at one point went full Ed Gein and "preserved" his family. This confirms that it was indeed him in the lake house and that she didnt see an apparition. Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. smart, strong, loyal, has justice. The monster was actually Raymond Andrew Joubert, a very real necrophile-turned-serial killer who suffered from acromegaly, leading to his extreme proportions. As she smashes Gerald's water glass and begins slicing through the skin on her wrist and up into her palm in order to remove skin and slide out of the handcuff, Jessie later comments on the realization she made while doing so: She's been living a metaphor ever since that summer of the eclipse. The scene of sexual assault, while disturbing, is mired in these complicated emotions. PTSD affects the lives of 8 million people worldwide, including children! Both books center around complex and compelling women as they navigate deeply haunting hardships, which tie them together in unexpected ways. How is old is Gerald when the story begins? Gerald's Game: The Eclipse Scene fully creeps you out! The math [doesn't work out]. Gerald's Game was a real page turner and renewed my appreciation for King's novels, as his more recent ones haven't . I think there times we actually had to cover up the extent of the bruising on her wrists that was just natural from those horrible cuffs. He dies, leaving Jessie still handcuffed to the bed. If there is a problem with Flanagans film, then, it is this ignorance of reality. He stands silently in the corner with a bag full of bones and personal items, moving slowly towards her every time she looks away like a night terror she can't awake from. In the book, Jessie had her own internal monologue, but in the movie, manifestations of Gerald and herself speak to her throughout her ordeal. The premise of the film and the novel (1992) is, for Stephen King, very simple. After the husband dies unexpectedly, the wife is left handcuffed to their bed frame and must fight to survive and break free. Gerald's Game is a 2017 American psychological horror thriller film directed and edited by Mike Flanagan, and screenplay written by Flanagan with Jeff Howard. Where does Gerald live? Despite a brief jaunt in Mathematics at Durham University, film writing was always his calling. Jessie is left cuffed to the headboard in a skimpy negligee, with nobody for miles to hear her screaming for help. Jessie's alter reminds herself that the real Gerald left a glass of water on the shelf over her head, and when she can't reach it to her mouth, Jessie's alter points out the tag she pulled from her slip that she can make into a straw. Stephen King Teases New Salems Lot & The Stand Adaptations. Eventually, one day, she sees a picture of Raymond Andrew Joubert in the newspaper, as a man whos been arrested for vandalizing graves. With taut writing and stellar performances from the small cast that also includes Henry Thomas as Jessie's father and Carel Struyken as Raymond Andrew Joubert, Gerald's Game is a masterwork in the horror drama and survival horror sub-genres. Throughout the novel, King makes a point of providing an insightful look into Jessies mind. Carel Struycken is the actor who plays Raymond. [3], Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood were cast to play Jessie and Gerald Burlingame, along with Henry Thomas, Carel Struycken, Kate Siegel, and Chiara Aurelia. "If we don't tell your mom today, we can't ever tell anyone," Tom warned Jessie. People from a nearby house emerge to help. Jessie survived. At one point, when Henry's talking to Chiara and recommending they tell her mother what happened, he says, "I think we should just take our medicine" which is what Jack Torrance would call after Danny Torrance as he chased him through the halls of The Overlook Hotel. In the novel I think she spits in his face when she finally gets face to face with him. How does his mother teach him a lesson about fire? Watching Gerald's Game, the new Netflix movie and latest Stephen King property to be adapted for film, is an emotionally draining experience.It's a psychological horror story that plays out . We know the father is a villain and we know that the young Jessie is going to be the victim. It had reminded her of her father's smile when he told his family amusing things about his day as he sipped a before-dinner . Trevor Macy produced the film through Intrepid Pictures. We're kind of locked in the chamber with these stories now and I think that's a wonderful thing. taking horror seriously so you don't have to. Some he eats, some he keeps. On May 19, 2014, Deadline Hollywood reported that Mike Flanagan had been set to direct a film adaptation of Stephen King's suspense thriller novel Gerald's Game, scripted by Jeff Howard. You'll hear a couple other things dropped like she describes the Moonlight Man as "her visitor with the bag of bones." 2.) "My mom suffered from cancer and one night while she was on strong medication for pain, she grabbed my arm and told me: 'I know the truth about your college letters. As soon as Jessie gets to their cabin, she cuts up a steak to feed the starving pup. So it required us to come from a place of being as true as possible to Shirley's style and intentions, but allowing the story to expand so we can make a really long, detailed arc. Most of his "backstory" comes from self-suggestion in Jessie's mind; while trying to rationalize him as a trick of the light (or moonbeams) she begins to view him as an embodiment of death. Jessie thinks about her father and the stain he left on her life. We acted against that. He has a daughter that's about Chiara's age and I know that was some of the more difficult work he's ever had to do. Ghost Gerald admits to having hurt her often and on purpose, as Jessie realizes what would have actually happened to her in that bed had her husband not keeled over. How did you get her lips to look so dry for her final day on the bed? To free herself, Jessie writes to the real Ruth, with whom she has not spoken in decades, detailing what really happened at the lake house and subsequent events. There's nothing quite as satisfying as turning off a movie that really gets under your skin in the safety of your own home, looking around and realizing that your sense of safety is now gone, or at least threatened for a little bit.