It’s hard to find a good horror film based around Valentine’s; a search through Netflix yielded little, until a trailer for a romantic getaway gone wrong.

Gerald’s Game, based on the novel by Stephen King, brings little when it comes to gore but plays big psychologically.

The story begins with Jessie and husband Gerald driving to their holiday home to rekindle their marriage; they almost hit a stray dog along the way, and Gerald refuses to go back for it.

At the home, dear husband has had the house cleaned and stocked with food – the pair won’t be bothered all weekend; Jessie cuts up $200 meat to feed the poor dog in the woods. Gerald is eager to get things moving along, leading his wife inside and, for some reason, leaving the door wide open.

Jessie’s bought a brand new slip nightie for the special event, so new she almost leaves the tag on. Ripping it off, she hides it on the shelf above the bed before choosing her alluring position on the sheets; Gerald has popped a viagra and leaves the glass of water on the shelf, too, and then surprises her with a set of handcuffs.

Restrained to the bedposts, Jessie begins to panic when her husband begins to play out a rape scenario; past trauma catches up with her and she tells him to stop, and he berates her for now ruining the weekend before suddenly dropping dead on top of Jessie.

Jessie manages to push Gerald off the end of the bed, and if he hadn’t died from the heart attack he’s now dead from the blow to the head. In a panic, Jessie screams for five hours for help.

Remember the door they left open? In strolls that hungry dog, sniffing out Gerald’s corpse for a meal; Jessie tries to scare it away, but it takes a chunk out of him.

Should have taken in the dog, Gerald. Also, erectile dysfunction happens to guys who hate dogs.

To her surprise, Gerald suddenly gets up, only to quickly discover that she’s hallucinating; Gerald is still dead on the floor and this version of him is quick to berate her for wasting so much time screaming for help, as well as blaming her for their marriage problems. I’m left to wonder if it’s just her subconscious beating her down, or if Gerald was actually emotionally abusive when he was alive.

Jessie finally manages to slip out of the cuffs and turns to gloat to her husband, yet she’s still trapped on the bed – another hallucination caused by dehydration. The three of them discuss things Jessie never wanted to face – such as her sleepwalking that Gerald never seemed to notice – and the hallucinations remind her that there’s a glass of water above her; she manages to get it down but can’t bring it close enough to drink. Gerald says to her again that he liked her slip, reminding her that she has the tag on the shelf, too; she uses that as a straw to drink with.

Jessie falls asleep, but is woken again in the night by the dog, she sees what looks like Lurch’s cousin standing in a dark corner with a bag full of bones and jewelry; Jessie closes her eyes again and exclaims that he’s not real, Gerald claims the figure is death coming to get her and begins to call her ‘Mouse’ – this reminds her of a time when she was younger.

A flashback dream shows twelve year old Jessie arrive at a cabin by the lake with her family to watch the eclipse; her dad is the one who affectionately calls her ‘Mouse’, and she’s very much a daddy’s girl. Young Jessie doesn’t want to go out on the boat with the rest of the family, so she and dad stay behind; he says he misses when she sat on his knee when she was younger, she offers to sit on his knee and he masturbates while she watches the eclipse.

Jessie wakes again in pain from her cut off circulation and cramp in her legs. The two hallucinations are skeptical about the secret she kept for all those years not being a burden to her marriage – despite marrying a man just like her father. Jessie’s dad apologised for what he did, but manipulated her into keeping a secret. There are some suggestions later that he may have taken things further with her, using handcuffs.

Gerald teases Jessie about the figure he calls ‘the man made of moonlight’, pointing out a bloody footprint on the floor; when she denies he’s real, Gerald points out that the dog left around the same time the figure appeared.

Other Jessie reminds her of the event after the eclipse, when she sat down to dinner with family and broke a glass from holding it too tight; she’d cut her hand, leading to Jessie planning her escape with the hallucination version of herself helping her through it. She manages to break the glass against the shelf and cut her own wrist to slip free, but almost completely skins her hand in the process.

Jessie drags the bed to the bathroom to unlock her other hand, then fashions a bandage out a sanitary pads before trying to phone for help; her phone is dead and there doesn’t seem to be a landline. Jessie passes out next to Gerald’s body and wakes later to see his face half eaten; as she escapes, she meets the man made of moonlight and offers her ring to him and taking off in the car – he suddenly appears in the back and she crashes into a tree. A couple in a house nearby find her and save her.

Six months later, she’s writing a letter to her younger self, explaining she feigned amnesia to the police to avoid recalling the situation, and she’d set up a foundation for victims of sexual abuse with Gerald’s life insurance. She’s also had several skin grafts on her hand.

It also turns out that Lurch’s cousin was real afterall: a murderer, grave robber and collector of bones who also eats the faces of male corpses – Jessie thought it had been the dog.

She goes the trial of the man made of moonlight; when they comes face to face he exclaims ‘you’re not real’, letting the viewers know he had been in the house all along; Jessie sees her dad and Gerald in him and states ‘you’re so much smaller than I remember’ before walking out to get on with her life.

Gerald’s Game is a slow paced film, concentrating on the trauma Jessie suffered through as a child to help her overcome her current situation; however, it’s told well and the hallucinations of herself and her husband help to keep things from getting too boring.

3.5/5: For the slow pace and lack of gore.