Starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. Rated 14A.

Gone Girl is, in many ways, the crackerjack entertainment many were hoping for. Still, some may wonder how much caramel corn you must consume to get such a small prize.

High-toned David Fincher, who not long ago directed the American franchise of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, here handles a deluxe repackaging of Gillian Flynn’s popular airport novel, with screenplay by the author, who has, shall we say, rather volatile views of class and gender politics. Ben Affleck and England’s Rosamund Pike (going stiffly American) star as Nick and Amy Dunne, New York City writers driven by hard, if sketchily drawn, economic times to return to Nick’s native town of North Carthage, Missouri, where their storybook marriage goes south.

When Nick comes home to find Amy gone amid suspicious surroundings, he calls the cops, and a local detective (Treme’s excellent Kim Dickens) is a neutral sounding board for his possible complicity in her disappearance. Certainly, his shifty behaviour raises red flags. So do Amy’s journal entries, which operate as intentionally too-perfect counterpoint in the he said/she said structure that dominates the film’s fairly breezy 149 minutes, supported by Trent Reznor’s music, which sometimes burbles so intently, it can be hard to hear what either of them is saying. In any case, it becomes obvious early on that this conversation will be a rather lopsided affair.

Amy, it turns out, grew up “plagiarized” by her parents, who improved upon her life in a popular series of children’s books, leaving her resentful and unsure of her own identity. That device was itself seemingly lifted from the childhood of Rachel Griffiths’s Brenda character on Six Feet Under, where it was given several years’ worth of episodes to bear poisoned fruit. Flynn uses this peculiar background less to create complexity than to spread fear; indeed, except for the detective and Nick’s asexually presented sister (strong newcomer Carrie Coon), all the screen females—from ditsy neighbours to lowlife grifters and cable-news Barbies—are most notable for their predatory skills.

Men don’t fare much better, but Tyler Perry, of all people, is at least allowed to have energetic fun as the big-city lawyer who enters the picture as Nick’s situation heats up. This helps, because our interest in the main combatants flags considerably as the hours go by. Fans of the book may delight in Gone Girl’s stylishly hyperbolized view of modern marriage. Sorry, but if both central characters are potentially deranged psychopaths, how does that comment on anything except what sells?