Gone Girl · MLM dirt · Mary & Bill

Should we start recognizing October 3, 2014 as the official onset of the golden era of true crime? That’s the day that the Serial podcast dropped its first ever episode, ushering in what is widely argued to be the current wave of a more prestigious approach to the genre. It’s also the day that the movie Gone Girl, which just as arguably set the stage for every true crime satire we’ve seen since, was released in theaters. I’ll wait here while you pick up the pieces of your blown mind — I’m still assembling my brain after realizing that odd coincidence (OR WAS IT) shortly before I sat down to write.

I’d decided to revisit David Fincher’s big-screen adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel after Sarah and I recorded last week’s episode of The Docket, in which we discussed some of the most recent examples of properties that take on true crime as a cultural phenomenon. As I noted there, an unfortunate incident with a hotel treadmill’s built-in TV meant I was trapped with the first episode of Based on a True Story; but what I didn’t mention was that the show started me thinking about how Gone Girl tackled many of these themes nearly a decade ago — and, to my memory, did it better.

But memory is a tricky thing. If I were to watch Gone Girl now, in this post-Serial (and The Staircases, and I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, and The Jinx, etc etc etc) era would the film’s trope and media crit aspect still hold up? Would the Eve of 2023 — who now operates a daily true-crime analysis newsletter and whose additional nine years in journalism has provided an increasingly jaundiced view of both contemporary policing and the media — look at the movie the same way?