‘Gerald’s Game’ Director Explains Film’s Controversial Final Scenes

The latest adaptation in a long line of Stephen King adaptations, Gerald’s Game, debuted this past Friday on Netflix. The film has received mostly positive reviews, with one of the most talked about elements being the film’s final sequences, which some fans have loved while others have hated. The director recently explained to Bloody Disgusting the importance of these sequences and how he remained faithful to King’s vision when bringing these scenes to life.

***WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Gerald’s Game***

In the film, Jessie (Carla Gugino) finds herself handcuffed to a bed when a sexual encounter with her husband turns fatal, as he suffers a heart attack and dies. During her isolation, Jessie’s mind begins to hallucinate, at one point conjuring a “Moonlight Man” who lurks in a corner, whom she assumes is her mind playing tricks on her. Rather, this figure was an actual grave robber who watched Jessie’s torment, who was eventually caught and confronted by Jessie.

Since the original novel’s debut, this ending was heavily disputed amongst King fans, but director Mike Flanagan claimed it was integral to the complete project, for better or for worse.

“It was something when I read the book that I loved,” Flanagan revealed. “I know it was polarizing with fans of the book, so the people that hated that epilogue in the book are going to hate it in the movie. I fully expect that [the epilogue is] going to be the lightning rod for people to be like ‘Oh I was so into it and then (groans) that ending.’ But that’s what happened in the book. There was never a time where it felt right to do the film without that ending, for better or worse”

Flanagan didn’t merely include these scenes out of obligation, but used the Moonlight Man to serve as the embodiment of the film’s themes.

“I thought that we needed to have her confronting a physical embodiment of all the male perversion that she has dealt with in various forms from various people throughout her life,” Flanagan detailed. “I wanted to take all of that male gaze and the dirty nastiness that she’s gone through and put it all into skin.”

One change from the book to the film is that, in the book, Jessie spits in the face of the Moonlight Man, but in the film, she merely looks him in the face in both acceptance and dismissal of everything he represents to her.

Gerald’s Game is currently streaming on Netflix.