(No spoilers!) I was so up for the Gone Girl movie (trailer) because the book was one of my “Best Reads of 2013.” The movie could have disappointed in so many ways, and it did not. According to the credits book author Gillian Flynn wrote the screenplay–here’s what she says about that–and in the few places the movie departed from the printed page, it didn’t make a big difference.

The acting throughout is terrific. Ben Affleck, is a natural playing everyman Nick Dunne caught in snares of lies. Rosamund Pike (An Education), amazing as Amazing Amy. In a radio interview director David Fincher said that after watching clips of so many actresses over the years, he can get a read on them and their acting tricks pretty quickly, but when he saw Pike’s clips, he couldn’t “read” her. It made him think she’d be perfect for the Gone Girl, and he was right.

Also liked Tyler Perry as defense lawyer Tanner Bolt and Kim Dickens (Treme’s chef Janette Desautel) as Detective Rhonda Boney. (By the way, do you know your spouse’s blood type?) Everybody’s manipulating someone, except maybe Nick’s sister Margo (Carrie Coon). The omnipresent TV talk show hosts commenting in the background are too realistically sleazy to be all that entertaining. The movie website is as Fox News might have produced it.

If you like a suspenseful story, you’ll like the twists and turns of this one. If you haven’t read the book, there’ll be more surprises, but even if you have, it’s an exciting tale. There remains a weak spot at the very end, but there’s so much else that’s laudatory, it’s easy to forgive. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 87%; audience score 92%. A lot of the reviewers, while giving it a pat on the back with one hand seem to want to stab it in the back with the other. They give, but then they take away. Puzzling.