Malicious Monday - Amy Elliott Dunne

"Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder."                                                      

                                                                     -Amy Elliott Dunne               
Oh hiiii there! Welcome back to Malicious Mondays! Did you enjoy your benevolent Mondays? I hope so, because they're gone now! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!! It's no secret, here at the Foundation, we have a love for icy cold blondes. I can't really explain why, call it the Hitchcock lover within me. I love me a strong, independent, smart woman, but when she happens to be blonde with a little crazy mixed in, sign me up! Since today is the day after the Oscars, I decided to blog about Rosamund Pike's portrayal of Amy Elliott Dunne in the movie "Gone Girl" that won her the Oscar nomination (She also OWNED the Red Carpet in that HAWT Givenchy gown!). I mean, I've blogged about my fair share of sociopaths, psychopaths and all around evil biatches in the past, but this bitch... she needs to be studied! Not too long ago, I blogged about the novel "Gone Girl" and if you read that, you know I kinda have a thing for Amy. I get her. I understand her. She's fucking crazy, but I understand why she's fucking crazy. Rosamund Pike did a fantastic job bringing Amy to the silver screen. She gave me everything I wanted for Amy and more. 

Amy Elliott grew up constantly competing with a fictional character. In honor of their daughter, her parents wrote a successful series of books called Amazing Amy. The Amazing Amy her parents wrote about was inspired by Amy herself, but every mistake or action her parents didn't approve of, they would write Amazing Amy doing the opposite. It was like they weren't satisfied with the daughter they had, so they created a fictional one, a more perfect Amy. Amy always felt like she lived in the shadow of Amazing Amy. She could never possibly live up to this perfect, fictional character. This obviously gave the real Amy a ridiculous amount of issues. 

The cold kiss on the forehead... that's just insulting.

After marrying Nick Dunne, they both lost their jobs in the 2008 recession. Amy parents drained most of her trust fund so they moved to Missouri to be near Nick's ailing mother, Amy began growing dissatisfied in her marriage. This was mainly due to Nick's lack of interest or effort to make their marriage work. She funded Nick's business, but never got any gratitude for it. She then finds out he's cheating on her, but Amy doesn't get mad, she get's motivated. She begins plotting. She has Nick sign new life insurance papers, buys expensive items on Nick's credit cards and begins writing a fake journal dating back to before she even met Nick. She does all this under Nick's nose. Amy then begins leaving things behind for the police to discover once she went "missing." She staged what looked like a fake kidnapping, one that the police could look at and immediately know is staged. She also drained a lot of her own blood, splattered it on the kitchen floor and then cleaned it up to make it look like he did it! She didn't stop there!

She won't kill you, she'll just make you wish you were dead. 

In the fake dairy that she leaves for the police to find, Amy details fights and Nick's violent rage towards her. She also brilliantly fakes a pregnancy test so the police will believe she's fucking pregnant! She does all this to set Nick up as punishment for betraying her. Punishment for not appreciating the spectacular, brilliant woman she is. 

Meanwhile, Amy hides out by cutting and dying her hair, and watching the news from a run down cabin at some campers retreat. Her plan is to lay low until Nick is convicted of murder and is sent to the electric chair so she can commit suicide. Amy's diary is crucial to this, her diary is written in a way to make everyone love her, to make Nick look like an abusive asshole and selfish prick. Make no mistake, Nick is, but I'm sure Amy was no picnic to live with considering all this shit!

“I hope you liked Diary Amy. She was meant to be likable. Meant for someone like you to like her. She’s easy to like. I've never understood why that’s considered a compliment—that just anyone could like you.”

                                                                        -Amy Elliott Dunne

Amy's plans fall apart when she's robbed of the only money she's put away. She goes to an old, wealthy friend , named Desi, for help. Meanwhile, Nick is on to Amy's plan. He's figured it out, because Amy purposely left clues that only he could understand so that he would know he was being set up by her. It's brilliant! You can understand Nick's frustration as he's trying to explain to detectives, police, lawyers, anyone who will listen, but it's all too unbelievable. . 

Amy immediately regrets her decision when Desi takes her to a secluded, fortress-like mansion. She realizes Desi is obsessed with her and has waited patiently all this time to get her to this place he has built for her. There's no way for her to get out of the compound he has built. After watching an interview where Nick professes his love for her, Amy immediately begins to devise a plan to get out of Desi's clutches. She starts tying wire around her wrists and forcefully mutilates herself with wine bottles. She then seduces Desi so he's DNA will be in her. In the throws of passion, Amy murders Desi, She runs back to Nick and claims to the detectives that Desi had kidnapped her and held her hostage for several months. 

Will these two crazy kids ever work it out?

Nick's name is cleared, but he wants Amy to be locked up. He tries to prove all the things Amy has done, but there's no evidence. Amy has done anything. Only one detective is questioning her story, but it's not enough. Nick, his sister and the detective rack their brains on way to prove Amy is a vindictive murderer. Meanwhile Amy is becoming America's sweetheart, Everyone loves her. They see her as a hero for surviving months and months or torture and rape. 

Honey I'm home!

Amy has one fault in her plan. The credit card debts. She has to convince Nick to confess that he purchased everything. When they're about to go on a talk show, Nick is secretly planning to out Amy and tell America on live television everything she has done. But Amy has an end game. She gives Nick a present. A positive pregnancy test. Nick had donated sperm to a clinic, and Amy had saved it. Nick is out of options. He goes along with Amy's plan. He agrees to live in her fake world and be her perfect husband and father to their child. In the end, Amy wins, or so it seems. She pretty much blackmails a man to stay in a marriage with her so they can continue being the perfect couple that America has fallen in love with since her "kidnapping." Somewhere deep inside she knows Nick hates her but she doesn't care. As long as she can live this fantasy of the perfect American family that the whole world loves. 

She plays EVERYONE in the book/movie. She literally manipulates every single character in the novel and the world! She convinces everyone in the entire world that she was a survivor of a mad man who kidnapped and raped her. They hold her up as a hero, a beacon of hope. They see Amy and Nick's marriage as inspiring. If she, the wounded, cheated wife, can forgive and forget his infidelity and love him after the traumatic ordeal she experienced then it gives hope for other troubled marriages all around the country. Amy LOVES this. She's eating it up, and Nick is in absolute hell. A fitting end for both of them. 

Nick Dunne: You fucking cunt!
Amy Dunne: I'm the cunt you married. The only time you liked yourself was when you were trying to be someone this cunt might like. I'm not a quitter, I'm that cunt. I killed for you; who else can say that? You think you'd be happy with a nice Midwestern girl? No way, baby! I'm it.
Nick Dunne: Fuck. You're delusional. I mean, you're insane, why would you even want this? Yes, I loved you and then all we did was resent each other, try to control each other. We caused each other pain.
Amy Dunne: That's marriage.

Amy is a vindictive, manipulative bitch. She's completely insane, but brilliant at the same time. I like to believe that Nick is still living in misery and Amy is enjoying every minute of it. In Amy's mind, everything she has done to Nick is deserved. Divorcing him, or leaving him would have been too easy for Nick. She had already invested too much time into their marriage and relationship.He had taken everything from her. She wanted revenge. She refused to let him just walk away scott-free after he fucked up. In many ways, Amy felt manipulated by Nick, a man who promised to love and honor her. Amy felt degraded and abused by Nick. Because of this he needed to pay. In the end, Amy's ultimate revenge is keeping Nick in a loveless marriage with her. He knows if he leaves her, he'll lose all the respect he's gained back and become America's most hated man again. It's a fitting end for him. Amazing Amy always wins. 

Villain Score: Amazing fucking Amy

Gone Girl

"Dustin, didn't you JUST do a book review?"

 Yes I did, now get a ladder and climb off mah dyaaack!!!

I need to blog about this one, and yes SPOILER ALERT!!!! If you do not want to know the ending to this book DO NOT read this blog post. I don't want to get a bunch of smart-ass comments saying "Well thanks for ruining Gone Girl for me!" BITCH you've been warned. Don't act like I never told ya. There is NO WAY I can blog about this book without talking about the ending, I mean, that's a lie, of course I can, I just chose not to. 

The Gont Gurl (Translated from Dustish to English: Gone Girl.) is a 2012 novel written by the extremely talented Gillian Flynn. I know I'm a little late to the Gillian Flynn party, but I like to be fashionably late so it's fine. After this book, I'm going to read anything and everything she writes. She's absolutely brilliant.

I picked up this book at Target about a week or so ago. It was one of those things where I knew a movie had been made about it, and I had wanted to see the movie, but I didn't connect that had been made into a movie at the time when i picked up the book and bought it until later. It's weird, I know.

Gone Girl is about Nick Dunne's wife, Amy Elliott Dunne disappearing on their 5th wedding anniversary. As the story progresses and the police investigate, an unstable marriage is soon exposed and Nick Dunne begins to look more and more suspicious.

The story is told from the perspective of Nick Dunne and Amy Dunne. The first several pages, we keep going back and fourth between Nick telling us what's going on currently and then to Amy's diary, telling her story. At first Amy's past diary entries don't paint Nick in a very positive light. Amy is seen as the wife to a broken and cruel man who has fallen out of love with his beautiful and supportive wife.

The general public and the police both begin suspecting Nick due to his lack of emotion and general shoulder shrugging attitude. Nick also reveals to us, as readers, that he has a mistress. He admits that it's terrible and he's a horrible person, but he also has been giving us his side of the story which is very honest. I feel like if this guy killed his wife, he would have told us by now. I hate Nick Dunne, but at the same time, I'm rooting for him. I know he didn't kill Amy. Reading Amy's diary entries, I begin feeling horrible for her too.

"It had been an awful fairy tale reverse transformation. Over just a few years, the old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and out stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy. My wife was no longer my wife, but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her."

-Nick Dunne, Gone Girl

Then Nick, addressing us as readers, begins talking about some of the instances Amy talks about in her diary, though he doesn't know about the diary, we as readers are just getting insights into the diary because of reasons. For instance: At one point the detectives looking into Amy's case reveal all these credit card bills. Nick is shocked by this. He has no idea where this $200,000 in bills has come from. Later in her diary, Amy reveals that she's witnessed Nick looking at the bills in frustration. It's a huge "I don't know what to believe" moment.

Half way through the book it's revealed that Amy is indeed alive and well. She invented a BRILLIANT plan to have Nick framed for her murder. The diary we've been reading was all part of her elaborate scheme for getting revenge on Nick.  I'm not going into details with her plan, because it's on a whole other level. There's so many details and mind-fuckery that went into her plan that she deserves an evil mastermind award.

"I hope you liked Diary Amy. She was meant to be likable. Meant for someone like you to like her." 

- Amy Dunne, Gone Girl

The book really touches on marriage and how horrifying it can be. The slow realization that the person you married is not who you thought they were is a disturbing thought. This is a person you've committed your ENTIRE life to. A person you thought you loved and sincerely knew on all levels, until one day you wake up and realize this person has been pretending the entire time. It pretty horrifying.

“We weren't ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves – surprise! – we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way.” 

                                                                                               - Nick Dunne, Gone Girl

The book also touches on troubled parental relationships. Nick's fear that he's becoming his cruel and misogynist father who is slowly going insane is a major factor in the book that is tied it quite nicely. Then there's Amy's parents who have always had an idealistic vision of her. Wanting her to be perfect in every way. I can totally see how Amy is a fucked up sociopath just reading about her parents. Her parents wrote a series of books called Amazing Amy. Amy, obviously is based on their daughter Amy. Her parents constantly write this version of their daughter that doesn't exist and the real Amy has had to try and live up to that image all her life. Never being able to make a mistake, or be a real person. She had to be Amazing Amy. It's extremely sad.

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                - Amy Dunne, Gone Girl

The ending of the book left me wanting more, unfortunately. That's the only bad thing I can really say about it. SPOILER ALERT! Amy is never found out. She's never brought to justice. She traps Nick in a sick, loveless marriage because she doesn't want to get divorced. The power-play between them ends with Amy getting pregnant. Her ultimate trump card. In the end, both Amy and Nick get what they deserve. There can be no happy ending for either of them. Nick will have to live in a loveless marriage, constantly worried about Amy pulling another plot over him, and Amy has to live with the knowledge that Nick doesn't really love her, but despises her. She has to wake up everyday know that the only reason Nick is with her is because of the baby.

There's something disturbing about recalling an old memory and feeling utterly cold.

-Nick Dunne, Gone Girl

Gone Girl is a must read for anyone who loves thriller/crime books. It's brilliant beyond words. Just when you think you've figured something out, you haven't and your mind is blown. It's sick and twisted and makes you never, EVER want to get married!

"I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?"

- Nick Dunne, Gone Girl