CREDIT: FOX
David Fincher's newest opus Gone Girl is just another great Fincher film.

David Fincher’s Gone Girl is a lot like going to Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte.

Since the drink’s introduction a decade ago, Starbucks has perfected the pumpkin spice latte: the ratio between milk and the bitter, disgusting brown liquid the company calls ‘espresso’; the number of pumpkin-flavoured simple syrup shots that makes pumpkin taste like an actual fruit; the amount of whipped cream that’s adds a whopping 70 calories to the drink; and the ratio between cinnamon, nutmeg and clove that, for some reason, is called pumpkin spice.

Like Starbucks and the pumpkin spice latte, Fincher has perfected the art of directing, and Gone Girl is no exception.

Everything looks as elegant and as fabulous as you imagine life will be when you graduate: An apartment in busy New York City and a huge suburban house in a rather quiet neighbourhood; SUVs and luxurious European cars; a bar owner and a writer for a lifestyle magazine with a large circulation; a handsome, muscular Ben Affleck husband and a gorgeous Harvard- and Yale-graduate Rosamund Pike wife.

And when everything falls apart, Fincher turns the Hollywood-esque world of Gone Girl into his signature dark, grungy, mysterious world – the one so apparent in Se7en and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, among others.

Fincher’s also perfected the art of storytelling.

The film has no obvious and overdone turn of events, like someone being chased getting into a car that happens to be out of gas. There are no plot twists that will make you go, “Oh, that’s lame,” like that time you learned who killed Dora Lange in True Detective. Everything just flows smoothly like ‘espresso’ being pulled from a $20,000 Mastrena espresso machine at Starbucks.

And like the smiling Starbucks baristas convincingly acting like they actually care about how your day went, the acting in Gone Girl is top notch – especially Pike’s. Her acting is so great that it’s bothersome that Amy Dunne, the character she plays, is not an actress.

If the Emmys, Oscars, Golden Globes and all the other awards we give to people for wearing makeup in front of the camera and play the same roles they play in every movie are any indication of talent, she deserves them all.

To top it all off, the film’s soundtrack – by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — is one you actually want listen to, like the music that plays in Starbucks cafés.

But not everything’s great about going to Starbuck for a pumpkin spice latte.

The coffee-flavoured cup of milk with a dash of fruity-tasting pumpkin always tastes the same, no matter which Starbucks store you’re at, just like Fincher’s films are always same, no matter which one it is.

Gone Girl is no different. You know there’s going to be a plot twist going in to the film, and there’s nothing less thrilling than knowing that beforehand.

Sometimes the baristas at Starbucks put too much whipped cream on top of your pumpkin spice latte, and the drink ends up tasting even more like a cup of melted sugar than it typically does. Gone Girl also has some issues here and there. At one point in the film, for instance, the cops charge Nick Dunne, Affleck’s character, even though they have no tangible proof of the crime they’re accusing him of.

Then there’s the soundtrack. Starbucks is trying too hard to appeal to its customers with its. Why can’t the coffee shop just play radio music like every other store? Gone Girl’s soundtrack feels pretty much the same. While the mysterious, subtle Reznor-Ross soundtrack made sense in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it feels out of place most of the time in Gone Girl.

But Gone Girl is not Tim Hortons’ pumpkin spice latte. It’s Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte – it tastes great, but Fincher better find a new drink before the world has had enough of it.