Review Roundup: David Fincher's Film Adaptation of GONE GIRL, Starring Ben Affleck

David Fincher's highly-anticipated film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's best seller GONE GIRL doesn't hit theaters until next Friday, but the reviews have already started coming in ahead of its premiere tonight at New York Film Festival!

The film unearths the secrets at the heart of a modern marriage. On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) reports that his beautiful wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has GONE missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife?

In addition to Affleck and Pike, GONE GIRL stars Scoot McNairy, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: At its strongest, "Gone Girl" plays like a queasily, at times gleefully, funny horror movie about a modern marriage, one that has disintegrated partly because of spiraling downward mobility and lost privilege. Yet, as sometimes happens in Mr. Fincher's work, dread descends like winter shadows, darkening the movie's tone and visuals until it's snuffed out all the light, air and nuance.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Gone Girl gives us a portrait of two vipers spitting venom at each other across the landscape of a recession-busted, morally bankrupt America. Even with Fincher's unflinching gaze and Flynn's incinerating wit, shards of humanity remain. Shards in which we might even see ourselves. It's not a pretty picture.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: But I will say this: Anyone who lovedGone Girl the book will walk out of Gone Girl the movie with a sick grin on their face. You can stop being nervous.

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter: This is one instance in which a writer won't be able to complain about what the movies have done to her book. With a screenplay by the novelist herself, David Fincher's film of Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn's twisty, nasty and sensational best-seller, is a sharply made, perfectly cast and unfailingly absorbing melodrama. But, like the director's adaptation of another publishing phenomenon, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, three years ago, it leaves you with a quietly lingering feeling of: "Is that all there is?"

Justin Chang, Variety: Surgically precise, grimly funny and entirely mesmerizing over the course of its swift 149-minute running time, this taut yet expansive psychological thriller represents an exceptional pairing of filmmaker and material, fully expressing Fincher's cynicism about the information age and his abiding fascination with the terror and violence lurking beneath the surfaces of contemporary American life.

James Rocchi, The Wrap: Not only brutal but also brutally funny, "Gone Girl" mixes top-notch suspenseful storytelling with the kind of razor-edged wit that slashes so quick and clean you're still watching the blade go past before you notice you're bleeding.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: For once, however, all the fuss is justified. Superbly cast from the two at the top to the smallest speaking parts, impeccably directed by Fincher and crafted by his regular team to within an inch of its life, "Gone Girl" shows the remarkable things that can happen when filmmaker and material are this well matched.

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