In 2017, Gerald's Game, a (very faithful) film adaptation by Mike Flanagan, was produced by Netflix, starring Carla Gugino as Jessie and Bruce Greenwood as Gerald.
Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald are taking a weekend vacation to their lake house to try to bolster their intimacy. They disagree over Jessie trying to feed a stray dog some fancy meat, and then retire to the bedroom where Gerald initiates a bondage game usung real handcuffs to attach each of Jessie's wrists to the bedposts, spreading her arms. Gerald tries to enact a rape fantasy, deeply upsetting Jessie, and when they have an argument, Gerald dies on the bed of a heart attack. Jessie is completely trapped on the bed with no escape, the hungry stray dog keeps coming by, and she begins to dissociate with avatars of herself and Gerald in her fear, physical decline, and desperation to escape. Even worse, a mysterious threatening figure is appearing to her in the darkness. Jessie begins to reopen her past, which might just be the way she holds onto a future.
In addition to the tropes occuring in the original book, below are those exclusive to the movie.
But you said these tropes sounded like fun:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Gerald in the book is described as nearing fifty, overweight and losing his hair. Movie!Gerald is played by Bruce Greenwood, who, despite being more than a decade older than Book!Gerald, is a very attractive man with a full head of hair and an impressive physique for his age.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: A very small example, but along with the Pet the Dog example below, in the film Gerald is a LITTLE less aggressive and backs off, angry but also disappointed, when Jessie struggles against him via biting his lip, before he has his heart attack. In the book Gerald refuses to back down at all, forcing Jessie to kick him repeatedly, which is suggested to have been the last bit of stress that triggers said heart attack. Whether Movie!Gerald would have uncuffed Jessie then had he not suffered said heart attack, or reverted to his book behavior is left up in the air.
- Adaptation Name Change:
- Downplayed. It doesn't apply to a character's birth name, but nickname. In the book, Jessie's father nicknamed her "Punkin", in the movie, it's "Mouse".
- In the book, Jessie refers to the mysterious stranger in the room as "the Space Cowboy". In the film, he's dubbed "the Moonlight Man".
- Adaptational Modesty: In the book, Jessie is topless and wears nothing but a pair of underwear throughout her ordeal. In the film, she wears a full slip.
- Adapted Out: Ruth Neary, Nora Callahan, Meggie Landis, Brandon Milheron... basically, if the character wasn't physically in the house or a family member of Jessie's in the book, they don't show up in the 2017 film.
- Ascended Extra: In the book, Gerald lies dead on the floor and only briefly appears in Jessie's hallucinations. In the 2017 movie, he serves as a major hallucination that tries to talk her down and manipulate her.
- Canon Welding: In the 2017 movie, when Jessie is coming to terms with the likelihood that she's going to die when the Moonlight Man returns, Gerald tells her "All things serve the Beam." This could be either a Shout-Out to The Dark Tower, or have considerably deeper implications.
- Another case comes in the form of a cameo from a copy of "The Midnight Mass" by Maddie Young.
- Chained to a Bed: Jessie ends up with both wrists cuffed to the bedposts with real police-grade cuffs, and Gerald, who can uncuff her, dies of a heart attack. The cuffs are too tight around her wrists to be pulled out of, the bedposts are carved such that the cuffs cannot be slid up off the ends, and the bedposts are strong enough not to be broken by pulling at them. Jessie undergoes a lengthy torment as she wrestles with herself and tries to figure out any way of surviving and escaping.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: The glass of water Gerald takes his erection pills with and places on the overhead shelf first comes back as a means for Jessie to prevent dehydration, and then provides the means to cut her wrist open enough to pull her right hand from the cuff, the inciting victory of her ultimate escape.
- Chekhov's Gun: The small overhead wall shelf just above the bedposts is essential to Jessie's survival and escape. She remembers Gerald put a glass of water there after taking his Viagra, and, since her cuffed hands can just grab the ends of the shelf, she is able to jostle the shelf with her left hand to slide the glass down to her right hand. The store tag Jessie took off her new slip and stashed on the shelf above her left hand then allows her to roll a straw to actually drink from the glass and stave off dehydration. The glass later allows her to break it to get a shard, lodge the shard into the shelf, and create a blade to cut her right wrist to deglove and lubricate the hand enough to be able to pull out of the cuff, whereupon she is able to get herself freed the rest of the way.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The grave-robber spoken about on the radio in the beginning of the movie is Joubert. Likewise, the dog which will eat part of Gerald's body was previously met on the road.
- Fan Disservice: Carla Gugino spends much of the film in a skimpy outfit and Bruce Greenwood, who is very handsome and fit for a man in his sixties, spends a good portion of it shirtless and with his six pack abs clearly visible at a few points, but the tone and story make the effect very off-putting.
- A Glass in the Hand: A young Jessie does this when the sight of her father affectionately touching her mother's hand triggers a traumatic memory of her father sexually abusing her in the past. Remembering this incident gets Jessie to realize she can use the glass of water she currently has to cut her right wrist enough to escape its cuff.
- Mythology Gag: Gerald calls the dog Cujo, referencing another famous Stephen King story.
- Pet the Dog: In the movie, Hallucination!Gerald is genuinely horrified that Jessie was sexually molested by her father and gives her a wistful farewell when she escapes her bondage.
- After what happened during the eclipse is revealed, Hallucination!Gerald profoundly realizing why it didn't work out between the two of them, looking troubled when learning about the many secrets Jessie kept from him during their marriage. He looks very concerned about how Jessie knows the reasons so many people choose to commit suicide by slitting their wrists.
- Psychosexual Horror: Jessie is chained to her bed as part of her husband Gerald's sexual fantasy. Unfortunately, Gerald dies of a heart attack after taking Viagra and Jessie is left trapped in the bedroom and chained to the bed. Unbeknownst to Gerald, Jessie has a fear of intimacy and sex after her father sexually abused her when she was 12 and she drifted towards him because Gerald reminded her of her father.
- Setting Update: The 2017 film moves the setting to The New '10s, rather than 1992, when the book was written. By extension the day of the eclipse moves forward from 1963 to somewhere around 1989.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In the book, Prince (Jessie's canine visitor) is shot by police. The film version doesn't tell us the dog's ultimate fate.
-
Technology Marches On: There's a smartphone Jessie attempts to use near the bed, before reading the battery was flat. - What Happened to the Mouse?: In the book, Prince (the dog that feasts on Gerald) is shot by the police. In the 2017 film, we don't learn his fate.
