A missing wife. A shady husband. Clues to her disappearance. The most intriguing, twisted plot in recent memory.

The most gripping details of “Gone Girl” pull people in and then spit them out, having them leave the theater realizing it deserves every piece of praise it’s been getting.

Already critically acclaimed for good reason, “Gone Girl” is the tale of a happy courtship and marriage that soon turns less than happy, plagued by lying and violence.

During a time when it seems difficult to keep a best-selling book and a movie telling the same story, director David Fincher and author of said bestseller Gillian Flynn do just that.

Given she also wrote the screenplay, very few scenes and ideas of Flynn’s 400-page plus novel were left out of the two and a half hour film.

Rosamund Pike plays the gone girl, Amy Dunne, as if she was made for the part. Her acting lets the audience see her character as the perfect combination of a psychopath and genius, something the actress plays expertly.

Pike delivers her performance in a way that makes people forget one of her biggest roles to date was playing the lesser sister in the 2005 remake of “Pride and Prejudice.” Her new recognition from this performance will have people asking “What’ll she do next”

She acts in such a convincing way most actresses haven’t recently and, after one movie, she becomes one of the most talked about women of the year with only her performance in the movie getting more buzz than she has.

Going back and forth from the present of the ongoing search for Dunne to the past of Dunne’s written diary entries chronicling the perfect and then the unperfect marriage she and her husband have, the story is told in a way many recent films haven’t explored.

Dunne’s husband, Nick Dunne, played by Ben Affleck, seems every part the concerned husband until he’s seen smiling at press conferences and posing for pictures with neighborhood women, only adding to the detectives questioning his mindset.

Although Fincher’s other work includes well-received movies including “The Social Network” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “Gone Girl” seems to hit it out of the park the most.

The only performance to come close to Pike’s is Neil Patrick Harris’, playing the suspicious high school boyfriend of Pike’s character. His role seems incorrectly cast with it being hard to shake the image of him as womanizer Barney Stinson on “How I Met Your Mother.”

However, Harris’ final scene is so chilling it’ll make even the most thrill-seeking audience shift uncomfortably in their seats.

Unfortunately, the ending of the film was the biggest disappointment in a way and audiences will most likely will feel cheated and ask for more a more definitive ending.

Even with that slight disappointment, “Gone Girl” is getting approval for a reason. It’s sharp, twisted, and full of thrills. It’s dark and violent. It’s everything faithful readers of the worldwide bestseller want it to be.