It's clear that Jessie is uncomfortable, but trying to hide it. I think the difference is, for all its description, the thing you never consider is the sound. I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives, Dies, and Haunts in the House, Where are all the bodies? Gerald's Game's ending is thus unflinchingly about addressing and learning from the past. 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. I think that's the tradeoff you gain when you give up the theatrical component for projects like this. Jessie doesnt accept her death lying down in denial. Unsure if the figure is another hallucination, Jessie dismisses it, saying aloud it is "only made of moonlight," which seems to make it vanish. Also, Gerald is a lawyer like her father. 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 . It was revealed that she was sexually abused by her father and the father manipulated/ gaslighted her into not speaking up and keep it as a secret. I think we did two takes on each and called it a day. When Stephen King conceived of Gerald's Game, he saw it as a two-part novel that included what went on to becomeDolores Claiborne, as both stories share the horrible theme of a father abusing his daughter. The scene of sexual assault, while disturbing, is mired in these complicated emotions. As soon as Jessie gets to their cabin, she cuts up a steak to feed the starving pup. Flanagans interpretation of Geralds Game sacrifices nuance in order to provide the viewer with a straightforward, black-and-white interpretation of sexual molestation. He says, "That's because you're bigger." I always will. Chiara understood the material really, really well and went into it with the kind of bravery I think even the older actors and older crew members involved didn't have that level of bravery that she had. Yeah, and it was fun because we always looked at Jessie 2 as who Jessie needed to turn into by the end of this. she put his hand over the fire and his hand got burnt. You're only made of moonlight." In one of arguably the most disturbing plot developments in the Stephen King multiverse, Jessie's nightmare vision turns out to be very, extremely real even though it will be some time before Jessie figures this out. Her relationship with her pregnant mother Sally (Kate Seigel) was strained, and Sally made no secret of how much she disliked her daughter. 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. While the concept of the Moonlight Man is inside Jessies head, the person she sees by the side of her bed is Raymond. 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. I remember once I had that image of Gerald getting back up off the floor and sticking with us for the rest of the movie, that really blew it wide open. That was really the heart of it. cincinnati. Delirious, she removes her wedding ring and gives it to him for his trinket bag before leaving. "You're so much smaller than I remember," she tells him and walks away a different kind of free woman. I couldn't imagine anything more graphic than the way Stephen King described the hand scene. Throughout the novel, King makes a point of providing an insightful look into Jessies mind. A little bit. Jessie also remembers an inexplicable event in the aftermath of the abuse, during which she experienced a momentary psychic connection with an unknown woman. When she awakes, the "man made of moonlight" is at the end of the hall. As Gerald starts to crawl on top of her, knowing her protests are real but ignoring them anyway, she kicks him in the stomach and in the groin. A nearby couple rescues her. When Jessie is young and watching an eclipse, her dad asks her to sit on his lap because that arouses him. Initially, coming off the read of the novel, there was so much wonderful material in there. Yet, the resurgence of one of the most underrated Stephen King novels is timely. Gerald's Game by Stephen King. This child is 10 years old - Reddit Jessie thinks she's hallucinating this monstrous vision as she had with ghost Gerald and her other self. Gerald's Game premiered on Netflix over the weekend, so now wecan talk about spoilers. Kim Pegula's father shares words: 'I will continue to fight' You can binge it which means that you're not in the business of creating these isolated little pockets of tension. Gerald and Jessie number 2 taunt that she never recovered from the assault, and that she married a man just like her father. 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. There is a real possibility that Jessie will die if she cannot escape. They get into a horrible fight about their 11-year marriage and their recent problems, all while Gerald is still trying to have sex with his unwilling and vulnerable wife chained to the bedposts. She believes shes going to die. 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. It was like, "Okay, guys, let's stop walking on egg shells. For us we had it kind of flop back down afterwards because it was just too grizzly. It was a hard search to find Carla and I'm just so glad we did because if it had gone another way, I think the whole enterprise would've collapsed. 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. It's initially unclear why he spared Jessie. Her father manipulated young Jessie into believing that she was complicit, resulting in lifelong feelings of shame and guilt. There's definitely some need for invention. She sees her father and husband's faces in Joubert's as she stares him down. Starting as a simple sex-gone-wrong thriller, it turns into supernatural chiller, repressed-memory drama, torture porn horror - and that's before we even get to the jaw-dropping ending. Gerald's Game, Stephen King's 1992 novel about a woman who finds herself in perilously restrained circumstances, has long been considered unfilmable. It was a really bizarre way to work. Jessie and her husband Gerald have gotten away to their summer house in Maine to relax and engage in . After that, he proceeds to touch himself fully aware that Jessie knows what hes doing. 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. As far as I'm concerned, those two characters and those two stories are kind of permanently connected. Because we weren't really using music in the film almost ever, all that sound design is just front and center. The plot is centered on Gerald and his wife, Jessie, who plan a weekend in a remote lake house to spice up their sex lives. Gerald's Game ties itself up with a cautiously happy endnote but does so with a pretty shocking twist and rather dark case of coming to terms with the past. Because of his coercive language and gaslighting, Jessie fully internalized the shame and horror of what her father did not just as a child, but for the rest of her life. That was some of my favorite stuff, watching those two halves collide which is all Carla. 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. Jessie has her chance to confront her final tormentor, and does so on Joubert's first day in court. From the moment we enter into the flashback, we have an idea of what is about to happen. Summary: While trying to spice up their marriage in their remote lake house, Jessie must fight to survive when her husband dies unexpectedly, leaving her handcuffed to their bed frame. Shackled to the Past - The New York Times [Laughs] Well, a good amount of that, there was a lot of exhaustion emotionally and physically, pretty much in story order. Youre only made of moonlight. When she returns to the present, she realizes she's going to have to cut that same hand again in order to escape. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you. [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. Gerald wants to play a sex game and handcuffs Jessie to the bed, but has a heart attack and dies, leaving Jessie stranded. It was really amazing to watch. Are there different tactics for scaring people in their own homes with these Netflix movies and series, versus in a theater? . Geralds Games cast includes Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, and Carel Struycken. Later, when Jessie bandages her hand she even uses pads to stop the bleeding. Images of him continue to haunt Jessie after she's escaped, representing how coming to terms with her past and helping others hasn't fully freed her; in a chilling callback to something she thought to herself on the bed, the wedding ring she gave to the figure was never found. With the insurance money, Jessie starts a foundation to help young boys and girls like her. You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site. Based on the most pressing question that Ive received from people about Geralds Game, it seems the element that has gripped peoples heart is the Moonlight Man and the actor who has played it. Is this a very hard scene to watch? In Gerald's Game, Jessie talks about a dream with a woman looking into a well and thinks it's herself. Jessie spends her time handcuffed to the bed lost in . King blurs the moral lines of the incident and, effectively, allows the reader to feel the conflicted, competing emotions that a victim of sexual assault may well end up continually juggling. How did you direct Chiara Aurelia about what was happening in the eclipse scene? But it all goes back to that summer of the eclipse. Yes. Ostensibly this suggests that Joubert didn't kill Jessie because he didn't know there was anything to kill - we already know of his skewed view on the world - but the similar wording connects the two greater. You're not listening to the other people in the theater around you. It has not been announced for a physical DVD or Bluray release. But Jessie still dreams in the red of that solar eclipse dreams that include the Moonlight Man with eclipse eyes. Gerald's Game by Stephen King | Goodreads Over time he moves on to killing people and chopping off their body parts. She preferred to start her day as Jessie 2. Geralds Game is streaming on Netflix and you can find Kings novel at Amazon #ad: This website will focus on horror in all its forms (fiction, film, TV). Jessie decided she'd rather watch the eclipse from the lakefront instead of the boat, and her father Tom stayed with her. It's not long after Jessie is cuffed to the bed that the scenario turns ugly: Gerald's actual game is a violent intruder rape fantasy, one Jessie never agreed to. Gerald wants to play a sex game and handcuffs Jessie to the bed, but has a heart attack and dies, leaving Jessie stranded. 'Gerald's Game': A Twisted Rape Fantasy Gives Way to a Complex Study of Where does Gerald live? Jessie remembers how her mother suspected her father but did nothing. The Shirley Jackson novel, of which I'm a devoted follower, the material that's in the novel can comfortably fit in a feature film, but expanding it for a season of television is pretty difficult. Even as an adult looking back the situations that occurred are baffling. I know for Henry as well, we were both really feeling it as we were getting closer to those scenes. But in reality, its Raymond getting another piece of jewelry for his collection. Hes a chilled-out dude who most definitely is not a necrophiliac, however, does suffer from acromegaly. Also the fact that you're essentially carrying the movie on your shoulders without having arms or any mobility really for most of it. The two hallucinations trigger her to remember the glass of water Gerald had left on the shelf above the bed, which she is able to reach; when she can't drink it, she rolls the shopping tag she'd torn from her slip into a drinking straw to reach the water. 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. Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. There are scenes in Gerald's Game that do strike fear into the physical senses; the mangy dog eating Gerald's corpse, the all-too-real man who watches Jessie at night, the gut-wrenching visual of the skin of her hand sliding off to come through the handcuff. That level of exposure and vulnerability and physical discomfort. Played by cinema legend Carel Struyken, Raymond Andrew Joubert is a serial killer, necrophiliac, and cannibal who's been working the area. 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. We explain what really happened. Gerald's Game. [citation needed]. But each night the "man made of moonlight" still appears before her as she falls asleep. He is a big fan of all things horror, especially Stephen King and the haunted house horror genre. He doesnt stop there, he emotionally manipulates her to keep it a secret from everyone. Gerald suggests they play a fantasy sex game where she get handcuffed to the headboard of their bed, and she agrees. Outside, a starving dog prowls, and in the. 3.) We thought, to go through all this, the message we wanted to send was something that wasn't violent and wasn't a primal reaction, but something that took all of that, acknowledged and minimized it as much as possible, made it as small as possible and let her turn her back. After a heated argument in which he accuses her of not even trying to rekindle their relationship, Gerald dies of a heart attack, falling onto the floor and leaving Jessie trapped in the handcuffs. But what happened after was equally terrible: Tom manipulated Jessie into agreeing never to tell anyone at all, least of all her hateful mom, and made his disgusting crime seem like it was Jessie's idea to begin with. Flanagan does, however, provide a near line-by-line, moment-to-moment representation of what happens in Jessies bedroom following the assault, which is offered up by both book and film to be perhaps the worst crime. We worked on it throughout production. [4] On October 17, 2016, Flanagan tweeted indicating the first day of production had begun.[5]. 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 . And, you can sit there and power through three or four episodes at a time. In Geralds Game, Stephen King crafts one of his most feminist novels. Who would rescue Gerald when he was alone? 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 Walking Dead: Did the Carol/Morgan Scene Go Too Far? She manages to drive away in the car, but her fatigue makes her lose consciousness and crashes into a tree. 15 Juicy Family Secrets Remix - BuzzFeed When Jessie is young and watching an eclipse, her dad asks her to sit on his lap because that arouses him. He then informs her that she is beginning to suffer from dehydration and fatigue. Tom Mahout | Stephen King Wiki | Fandom 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. When little Jessie sees the house and says, "It's so much smaller than I remember." The dog enters through the open door of the house. With Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Chiara Aurelia, Carel Struycken. Analysis of Gerald's Game by Stephen King - GradesFixer It was really hard to cast because it's a role that's very frightening to a lot of actors. Well also be offering Top 10 Lists if youre looking for something to watch! "[7] At Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film has a score of 77 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews. Does that mean creating new characters to be this family? In Geralds Game, Jessie Burlingame becomes our window into a world that has been darkened by broken trust and a darkened sun. Let's do the scene." Gerald's Game opens innocuously enough, with Jessie and Gerald packing small bags for a weekend away. Gerald firstly gets a refusal for his handcuff idea, and secondly, gets a heart attack and dies, leaving a cuffed Jessie to figure her way out. . In the final moments of Jessie's flashback to being sexually molested and then psychologically abused by her father, Jessie remembers she accidentally broke a water glass in her hand during her first family dinner after the incident. It's clear in Gerald's Game that Jessie's mother suspected something happened during the eclipse, but she does nothing to stand up for or protect her daughter. But the key word here isalmost. I'm sure as a fan you knew the eclipse was the same eclipse in Gerald's Game and Delores Claiborne. Sexual assault has never before been so keenly tied to the forefront of the social consciousness. But by this point, Jessie is preoccupied with the stray dog, and Gerald is getting ready for his big event by popping Viagra. Months later, Jessie is still recuperating from her ordeal. The ending is, of course, framed as Jessie's moral victory and there's no attempt at making Joubert sympathetic, yet them sharing the core line (one he may have picked up from her) makes clear that what we've discovered Jessie's experienced through her life is not an isolated incident. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. student at Lehigh University who is interested in studying a 18th and 19th century fiction, including the gothic. The dog is real and is actually in the room with Jessie the whole time. As if the viewer was not uncomfortable enough, we are exposed to the deceit and the lies that a father imposes on his daughter. Based on a novel by Stephen King, Gerald's Game is now streaming exclusively on Netflix. Gerald begins to call Jessie "Mouse", which triggers a memory of her father Tom, who affectionately referred to her as "Mouse." The news reported that he gouged out eyes and other body parts of corpses. Gerald's Game Analysis - eNotes.com We use cookies to optimize our website and our service. His bag of bones is open and Jessie puts her wedding ring inside, saying once again, "You're not real.