‘Gerald’s Game’ Trailer: Mike Flanagan Adapts the Most Unadaptable Stephen King Novel
How about a new Stephen King trailer to go with this week’s new Stephen King movie? On the eve of IT’s release (read our full review here), Netflix has unleashed the first trailer for Gerald’s Game, the upcoming thriller from Oculus director Mike Flanagan. As any good King fan will tell you, Gerald’s Game is probably the most unadaptable of the author’s novels — and that’s not necessarily due to graphic content, despite the implications of the inciting incident.
Carla Gugino stars as Jessie, a woman who heads to a remote cabin to work on her troubled marriage to her husband Gerald, played by Bruce Greenwood (a man who’s practically built a career on playing bad husbands). That’s when the eponymous “game” comes into play: Gerald handcuffs a reluctant Jessie to the bed, but when she demands to be set free, he has a heart attack and dies — leaving her trapped with little chance of escape.
That’s hardly a spoiler; it’s the entire premise of the story, which centers on Jessie as she desperately attempts to free herself with only her (often unpleasant) thoughts and memories to keep her company. In King’s novel, Jessie talks to herself and revisits traumas that led her to this point in life, but in Flanagan’s film, she’s also imagining conversations with both her dead husband and her younger self. That’s an interesting choice, as the reason why the novel is so unadaptable is that the majority of it is Jessie’s inner monologues and flashbacks while handcuffed to a bed — not exactly the most cinematic material.
Gerald’s Game is premiering later this month at Fantastic Fest before it hits Netflix on September 29.
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