Amy Dunne explained: the plan, the diary and the Amazing Amy myth

Amy Dunne explained: who Amy Dunne is

Amy grew up as the model for Amazing Amy, a series of children's books written by her parents, in which a fictional version of her always does better than the real girl. That background shapes everything: Amy has spent her life measured against a perfect copy of herself.

When she goes missing, the Amazing Amy fame turns her disappearance into a national news story, which is exactly what her plan needs.

How Amy fakes her disappearance

Amy's plan is meticulous.

• She writes a fake diary describing a marriage that slides into fear, ending with her worrying Nick will kill her.
• She raises Nick's life insurance and runs up his credit cards.
• She fakes a pregnancy using a neighbour's urine to make Nick look like a man killing a pregnant wife.
• She stages a bloody scene in the kitchen.
• Her original plan was to drown herself so her body would be found after Nick's arrest.

Why she does it

Amy's motive is punishment. Nick has let the marriage slide and is having an affair with a young student. Amy decides to destroy him in the way he would feel most: publicly, as a man everyone believes is a murderer.

Flynn has said she wanted to push back on the idea that "women are naturally good" and show women can be "just as violently minded as men are." Amy is not explained away as a victim; her choices are her own.

Desi and the return

When Amy is robbed while hiding out, she turns to Desi Collings, a wealthy ex-boyfriend. Nick's televised interview starts to win public sympathy, and Amy changes plans. She stages evidence that Desi kidnapped and abused her, seduces him, and kills him.

She then returns home, covered in his blood, as the rescued wife. Privately she tells Nick the truth. Weeks later she reveals she is pregnant, using Nick's stored sperm, which traps him in the marriage for good.

How Pike and Fincher shaped Amy

Reese Witherspoon was first linked to the role, but Fincher chose Pike in part because she was less familiar to American audiences and had an enigmatic quality. Producer Ceán Chaffin has said Fincher averaged as many as 50 takes per scene, and Pike's controlled, shifting performance came out of that process.

The film's costumes also track the masks Amy wears, from glossy New York wife to the casual Cool Girl she describes playing for Nick.

The feminist debate

Amy split critics. Some, such as Jezebel's Jessica Coen, argued the film was more misogynistic than the book. Others saw her as a feminist antiheroine. Zoë Heller wrote in the New York Review of Books that Amy was "not really a character" but an idea, and Time's Eliana Dockterman argued the film was both a sexist portrayal and a feminist manifesto.

That argument is part of why Amy endures. She is built to be read in more than one way.

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