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| “ | You're not real. You're not real! You're only made of... moonlight! | „ |
| ~ The Moonlight Man, remembering and mimicking Jessie Burlingame. |
Raymond Andrew Joubert, alternatively known as the Moonlight Man is the main antagonist of the Stephen King novel Gerald's Game and its 2017 film adaptation. He is a serial killer and necrophile.
In the 2017 film, he was portrayed by Carel Struycken who also played The Creature in The Prey.
Biography[]
Novel[]
Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald travel to their secluded lake house in western Maine for an unplanned romantic getaway. To spice up their relationship, Gerald handcuffs Jessie to a bed to make love to her. However, Jessie withdraws her consent and kicks Gerald in the chest when he tries to continue anyway, causing him to have a fatal heart attack. Initially worried about a potentially embarrassing situation, Jessie soon realizes that there is a much bigger risk and she may legitimately die of dehydration if she cannot get free.
Waking up from a nightmare, Jessie sees a tall figure in the corner of the room, who shows her a basket of jewelry made of human bones. She nicknames him the "Space Cowboy" and tells him that he is "only made of moonlight", seemingly causing him to disappear. However, the voices in her head tell her that the man is very real, and will kill her if she doesn't escape.
After she eventually escapes, Jessie is attacked by the now undeniably real Space Cowboy. She throws him her wedding ring, thinking that it's all he wants, but discovers him in the back of the car and crashes.
While recuperating, Jessie attends the court hearing of one Raymond Andrew Joubert, a serial killer and necrophile who has been robbing houses in the area. Joubert recognizes and advances on her, mocking her earlier statement about him being made of moonlight. She spits in his face and walks out, leaving him to be imprisoned for his crimes.
Film[]
Just like in the novel, Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald travel to their secluded lake house in western Maine for an unplanned romantic getaway but Gerald has a random heart attack when he is about to have BDSM sex with her. As a result, Gerald dies, leaving her handcuffed (both hands) to the bedpost. Initially worried about a potentially embarrassing situation, Jessie soon realizes that there is a much bigger risk and she may legitimately die of dehydration and starvation if she cannot get free.
After having a nightmare, she awakes to find a tall figure who reveals a bag of various bones and trinkets. She closes her eyes saying, "You're not real" and tells him that he is made of moonlight, but a vision of Gerald appears to say that the figure is Death waiting to take her. Gerald teases Jessie about the disfigured man she saw, whom he calls "the man made of moonlight", and points out what he suspects is a bloody footprint on the floor. After a lengthy time, Jessie escapes but bumps into the tall man, she gives him her wedding ring for his trinket bag and heads for the car, however, while she is driving, she notices the man at the back of her seat which causes her to crash the car out of shock.
Six months afterwards, seemingly suffering from mild PTSD, Jessie hallucinates the "man made of moonlight" every night before she sleeps. Not long after however, the same man is arrested for his crimes and brought to trial where his identity is revealed to be Raymond Andrew Joubert, a deformed and mentally-challenged grave robber, cannibal, thief and serial killer which prompts Jessie to briefly attend the trial to confront him. Jessie arrives at court as Andrew is being sentenced, and calls for his attention.
He happily quotes what she said before leaving the house, indicating that he was in fact there at the time. Seeing and sympathizing with his condition and mental state and also seeing Gerald's and Tom's face where his face is, she says, "You're so much smaller than I remember", and walks triumphantly out into the street with the sunlight gleaming down on her, leaving Andrew confused.
Personality[]
Novel[]
In the novel, Andrew is a tall man who takes delight in tormenting and murdering others as well as cannibalizing his victims and/or corpses that he robbed from various graves. He also seems sadistic and enjoys tormenting others as he took his time to wait for Jessie to escape her cuffs and hand over to him her wedding ring before proceeding to try and kill her. He is also unapologetic and a psychopath as he would taunt and mock Jessie when she confronted him at his trial after he was caught.
Film[]
In the film, Andrew is a tall, mentally challenged and deformed man who just like in the novel, robs and cannibalizes his victims for fun, though is portrayed as slightly more sympathetic than his novel counterpart. The fact that he referred to both his sister and her husband as "Mommy” and "Daddy” individually, implies that his sister presumably was the only maternal-like figure he ever had in his life, and her husband became like a paternal figure when she married him. Though it is unknown why he killed them both.
However, unlike in the novel, this version of Andrew doesn't seem to have intentions to kill Jessie and instead takes interest in her after their first encounter together. It is presumed that she was the only person to not respond to him with hostility, which intrigued him. At the end of the film when he was caught and brought to trial, he happily greeted her and mimicked the words Jessie said to him during their previous encounter to mock her. She only says to him “you are so much smaller than I remember” which visibly confuses him, perhaps even gets to him.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- A popular theory for the movie is that the dog was a hallucination too, and was in fact the Moonlight Man. In this theory, when Jessie saw the Moonlight Man, she was so terrified by what she saw she hallucinated him as the dog. Thus her brain could accept what it is seeing and better accept him eating Gerald. But the theory would only work for the movie, not the book as the presence of the dog was confirmed at the end of the story, which is the same reason for a lot of debating as if this theory is true.
