Move over, It: There's a new best Stephen King adaptation that just so happens to have been released in September 2017. Gerald's Game is a horrifying, fast movie with a killer (sorry) premise and a couple of all-timer performances. It's bigger; this is better.

The salient details are these: Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) are a married couple who travel to the middle of nowhere in Maine for a romantic getaway: retro cars and Kobe steak and all ("It's really from Kobe," Gerald mentions a few times). Quite quickly, an amorous, adventurous Gerald initiates a sex game turned rape fantasy: he chains Jessie to the bed with police-grade handcuffs, fights with her about their ailing marriage, and promptly dies of a heart attack, roughly 15 minutes or so into the film. Idiot.

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In less capable hands, this would be the opening to a survival thriller by way of MacGyver, but this is Stephen King we're talking about (and one of the most exciting genre directors working today in Mike Flanagan). Jessie's quests for survival and escape come in fits and starts. Gerald's Game, for the most part, is focused on something much more interesting: the horror of helplessness, and the insidious infection of memory.

Jessie isn't quite alone. In their rush to get the the bedroom, the front door to their holiday house was left open. A hungry dog, emboldened by Jessie's offer of some of that Kobe beef, finds Gerald's body fairly quickly, and starts to tuck in. There's also the small matter of Gerald himself taking the form of a hallucination, taunting and manipulating Jessie. Hell, there's even a second Jessie.

And so we're thrust into what could be described as one of the most surreal ensemble thrillers of all time. Greenwood is excellent, even conveying a good deal as a chewed-up corpse. It's important to remember that, after the inciting incident, the Gerald we're seeing is nothing but an extension of an increasingly desperate Jessie. He revels in her fear, and comforts her in equal measure. It's hard to tell which is more sinister.

But this is, of course, Gugino's film. She's playing off herself as much as she is Greenwood. Jessie 2, as Gugino and Flanagan called her on set, is a confident, harsh presence. A vision of what life could have been like for Jessie, or what it still could be, if she can just get these fucking handcuffs off. A third vision, hinted at to be none other than death, lurks in the corner occasionally. Silent. Waiting.

Gerald's Game is a gorgeous film. Tight, too, despite its one-hour-45-minute runtime. The flashbacks into Jessie's past could easily feel like padding—or exploitative, given the material within—but instead they form the nucleus of not only her trauma but her strength. Objections were raised to the ending of King's book, even by die-hard fans, and many will be surprised with just how closely the adaptation hews to the divisive final chapter. It might be a little silly, a little narratively disappointing. It's a rough end to a movie, but there's no doubt it's a worthy end to Jessie's story. And that's what matters.

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