With PTSD, the patient lives a lot in their head. After a traumatic event, this illness has over two times the chance of lasting for a lifetime. As a survivor of child abuse myself, I empathize heavily with this topic. I have personally spent nights gripped in the throes of night terrors, flashback, seizures, and panic attacks. I have gone through extensive therapy for years to treat my PTSD and I do have medication to treat it to this day. While many critics argue that the book is always better than the movie, Gerald’s Game gives the novel a run for its money with its portrayal of PTSD through the character of Jessie.
Jessie’s personal trauma is kept buried until she is reminded by constant intrusive thoughts. PTSD sufferers often try to bury their trauma, and sometimes even develop amnesia, if the traumatic event happened to them as a child. In Jessie’s case, her PTSD is explained halfway through the movie, when she recalls being sexually abused by her father. The fact that the screenwriter kept this scene in the movie directly from the book is key to Jessie’s character—it gives the viewer insight into why she is talking to herself, hallucinating, and why she reacted the way she did in the first place when Gerald failed to heed to her consent. While any person about to be raped would react in a similar fashion, keeping with the backstory explains why Jessie is not entirely heartbroken when Gerald drops dead.
A main facet of PTSD is the intrusive thoughts that Jessie has, where she knows she needs to remember something but she cannot recall what it is. In my own personal experience, intrusive thoughts are similar to how they are portrayed in the movie—small interruptions begging for attention, threatening to swallow the sufferer whole. This is seen in Jessie’s hallucination of Gerald, as he constantly hints at the things that she has been through, such as calling her “Mouse,” the nickname her abuser had for her. In the novel, Gerald is just a voice in her head. Using a hallucination of him to represent that to a viewer is key—the viewer knows he is not real, but he represents the abuse that she has suffered and that she is struggling with. Jessie knows that Gerald’s voice is just in her head, which is why when she sees the man in the corner at night, she says “you aren’t real.” She believes the man with the bag of bones and body parts to be part of her PTSD, part of the different voices inside of her head. The man in the corner first appears after Jessie has been dreaming, which is one of the reasons why she thinks he is not real. More than likely, Jessie has experienced night terrors and real life hallucinations attributed to her PTSD and so she naturally assumes that this man is part of those night terrors.
One could also argue that Gerald represents Jessie’s father. The two argue about how this repressed traumatic event didn’t affect their marriage, even though Jessie realizes that she indeed married a man that is just like her father. In my own experience, keeping abuse a secret leads to habits that the PTSD sufferer rarely recognizes, such as avoiding things relating to the abuse (in Jessie’s case, perhaps she has had a habit of avoiding sexual intimacy, which could be the reason why they are at the lake house for some “time away” to begin with). It also leads to a lot of subconscious resentment. The hallucination of Gerald could possibly represent her trauma in itself: it just gives the trauma the face of Gerald because his violent sexual advances are what brings up the memories of Jessie’s trauma to begin with. Whether or not this is true is not entirely clear and up to the interpretation of the viewer.
There is an implication from the beginning that sex is expected of Jessie. She wears a nightie, but becomes visibly anxious when Gerald takes a Viagra. This small scene is added by the screenwriter to show how sexual contact is implied, rather than explaining that Gerald has had a few violent sexual fantasies already and expects participation from his wife. The small act of taking the Viagra is meant to show the viewer that things are expected of Jessie, whether she wants them or not, just as her father expected her participation when she was just a child. This small scene also hints that Jessie does have certain avoidant tendencies for some reason, but the viewer has yet to given the reason why.
After the first appearance of the man in the corner (Or, as Gerald refers to him, “The Man Made of Moonlight”), the positive aspect of PTSD begins to kick in. One thing a lot of people don’t understand about PTSD is the sufferer is constantly anxious. Sufferers are constantly in a “fight or flight” mentality, as if the danger that traumatized them could return at any second. This anxiety is what fuels Jessie to cut open her hand, slide off the handcuff, and grab the key to free her other arm. She is afraid of the man killing her, just as she is afraid that her PTSD will last forever. She doesn’t believe he is real, but she still runs from him. This is a perfect example of how hallucinations are dealt with in patients with PTSD—the sufferer knows what they are looking at isn’t real, but it’s still just as terrifying and just as real as the memory it represents. In my own experience, these hallucinations are small things out of the corner of the eye, or even mental paranoia that manifests itself into something physical. Before Jessie leaves, she gives the man her wedding ring, showing that she has made the decision to drop what has happened to her.
PTSD is most commonly an illness that lasts a lifetime and in Jessie’s case, it does. But recognizing the trauma is a main factor in recovery, and Jessie has faced her trauma as she was handcuffed to the bed, she accepted it by giving the man her wedding ring, and she moves on by surviving her ordeal and getting away from the vacation house. She continues to keep her trauma to herself, however, as she feigns amnesia when she is found and saved from her crashed vehicle, right down the street from the lake house. She faces her trauma realizing that the man in the corner was real, and was not there to hurt her. The man is arrested, and Jessie goes to his trial. She approaches him and realizes that he is “so much smaller” than she remembered, the same way she recognizes that her trauma is not a defining factor in who she is sexually and as a person in general.
A lot of films have characters with PTSD, but none compare to Gerald’s Game. It is relatable and easy to empathize with Jessie and all of her actions and fears as an abuse survivor. The addition of the back story of her abuse and the scene with Gerald and the Viagra in the beginning are both key elements, one taken from the book and one added in by the screenwriter, to understanding the root of Jessie’s illness and the continuing effect it has on her well-being and perception. This portrayal of PTSD is about as accurate as one could hope for, thanks to the research on the illness by Stephen King and screenwriters Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard. Gerald’s Game is a shining example of how illness can be portrayed correctly, without placing fault on the sufferer. As a screenwriter, use metaphors. Do the homework needed for the illness that is being portrayed. Talk to people with the illness (without being exploitative, of course). Leave the viewer to sit and think about the film, instead of spelling it out for them. Sometimes, the abstract speaks better than the obvious.
