The Pumpkin King: GERALD’S GAME (2017)
A Secret Final Girl
GERALD’S GAME may not be a slasher or traditional psychological thriller, but the multiple subgenres of horror it encompasses only add to how much of a survivor the main character is. The critical aspect that upgrades the film from being reduced to being labeled as survival horror to a deep exploration of PTSD and confronting one’s fears and traumatic past is the confrontation with Raymond Andrew Joubert at the end of the movie. While some may see the end as a bit “too-on-the-nose,” I’d argue that it not only changes the genre of the film on a second viewing but makes our main character a Final Girl.
The basic premise of GERALD’S GAME sees Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) Burlingame take a romantic vacation to an isolated house to rekindle their relationship.
Shortly into their stay, Jessie and Gerald have an argument that ends when Gerald has a heart attack and dies on the floor next to a handcuffed-to-the-bed Jessie. That two-sentence spoiler-free plot summary would fill a runtime on its own and pose a convincing psychological thriller, but director Mike Flanagan (who co-wrote the adaptation with Jeff Howard) clearly loved the deeper themes of Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game and expertly weaves Jessie’s memories and hallucinations into the story.
Jessie was sexually abused as a child by her father and her PTSD presents itself in subtle ways that become clearer on a second viewing. Not long after Gerald dies, she hallucinates that he’s talking to her and also hallucinates a version of herself.
With these hallucinations, she confronts traumas and pain that she suppressed to the point of not allowing herself to accept that her husband was a version of her father and also inflicted similar pains and trauma on her. The trigger for these events is pointedly Gerald wanting her to take part in a depraved sexual fantasy that includes her being a restrained victim of sexual assault. Revealed throughout her hallucinations, Gerald wanted to be a physically and sexually dominant presence in Jessie’s life and cringingly labeled himself “daddy.” What is clear in these actions is that Jessie’s husband is no better than her father and her hallucination of him postmortem is horror on its own that she has to endure while trying to figure a way out of her trapped situation.
Unfortunately for Jessie, the insanity that she’s going through is bolstered by the appearance of "the man made of moonlight," who looks like nightmare fuel (played by Carel Struycken). Jessie convinces herself that he’s a hallucination like Gerald and the second Jessie that appears to her, but we learn at the end of the movie that he was, in fact, real. Not only was this "man made of moonlight" real, but she likely censored her brain into seeing a dog eat on her husband’s dead body and censored out the visuals of potential necrophilia as this man was really Raymond Andrew Joubert, a graverobber, serial killer, and necrophiliac. Given that the movie is told through the eyes of Jessie, this tells us that she’s an unreliable narrator and it’s most likely for the best, but watching the movie again amps up the horror of her situation and adds an additional layer of sympathy toward her.
Jessie is a resourceful survivor. She crafts a straw from a clothing tag to reach a glass of water and keep herself hydrated; Jessie censors traumatic visuals from her mind in real-time to protect herself from further terrors; the ultimate survival action by Jessie comes when she peels the skin off her own hand to slip a handcuff off and unlock herself from her bed prison.
Modern horror movies not only depict women as Final Girls who run from traumatic experiences, but show them as survivors who have active roles in their escapes.
GERALD’S GAME was perfect for Mike Flanagan to adapt when you compare how much of a survivor Jessie Burlingame is with Maddie Young in HUSH. Both characters were in very different situations, but both revolutionized Final Girl depictions. While Maddie in HUSH can be categorized as a bit more of a traditional Final Girl due to her traumatic experience being perpetrated by a sadistic individual hellbent on torturing her, Jessie in GERALD’S GAME deals with an invader to her physical space that she convinces herself isn’t really there as she deals with mental anguish while being physically trapped. What truly begins to release her from both the movie’s events and the events of the past, isn’t the end of her ordeal, but telling Raymond Andrew Joubert that he is “so much smaller than [she] remember[s]” in the courtroom that he’s being persecuted in. She not only sees Raymond when she says this but her father and husband as well, which allows her to pin the perverted men of her life onto a single entity and accept that she is a survivor.
