Based on the novel by Paula Hawkins, “The Girl on the Train”
is a whodunit in the vein of “Gone Girl.” Maybe it’s unfair to juxtapose the
two stories, but the makers of this film are so clearly hoping to recapture the
success of David Fincher and Gillian Flynn’s viciously clever mystery that the
comparisons are unavoidable.
Both are
chilly thrillers adapted from best-selling books featuring missing blonde
women, unreliable narrators, and nonlinear storytelling — hell, “Girl on the
Train” is even being released on the first weekend of October just like “Gone
Girl” was two years ago. But aside from a great performance from Emily Blunt,
the “Girl on the Train” comes up short, lacking the earlier film’s smarts and
wicked sense of humor.
Blunt plays
Rachel, a woman who spends all her time fixating on one specific moment of her
day: the time during her commute from the suburbs into New York City when her train stops and through her window, she can observe
beautiful, young Megan (Haley Bennett) in her gorgeous home along the tracks.
Through these brief glimpses, Rachel sees Megan and her husband, Scott (Luke
Evans), and imagines their picture-perfect lives together.
Megan and
Scott’s home just so happens to be two doors down from the house Rachel once
shared with now ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux), where he now lives with his
new wife Anna (a fragile Rebecca Ferguson, far from the fierce spy she portrayed
in the most recent “Mission: Impossible” film) and their infant daughter. A
stay-at-home mom, Anna employs Megan as a nanny.
But we learn
Megan’s life isn’t as blissful as Rachel assumes. She’s suffocating in her
domestic life, venting in sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr. Kamal Abdic (played by ÉdgarRamírez, because apparently Middle Eastern and Hispanic are
interchangeable in Hollywood) about her desire for some sort of escape.
At first
glance Rachel appears to be doing OK for herself, but a closer look reveals
exactly how damaged she really is. Constantly sipping vodka out of the water
bottle she carries with her everywhere she goes, she rides the train every day
to nowhere in particular, keeping up the appearance that she still has her PR
job in the city and wasn’t actually fired months ago.
Growing more
unstable, she obsesses over the perfect life she’s imagined in her head, until
one day she sees what appears to be Megan kissing another man, and Rachel’s
world suddenly collapses. Enraged, she disembarks to get a closer look, only to
awaken back in her apartment with bruises, covered in blood and news that Megan
has disappeared. Now Rachel has to sift through her hazy, booze-addled
memories, hoping to piece together what actually happened to Megan and keep one
step ahead of the investigation by Detective Riley (an underutilized Allison
Janney), who sees her as a prime suspect.
Director
Tate Taylor (“The Help”) and writer Erin Cressida Wilson don’t do much to
enliven the material for the screen, and drain the film of any suspense or
tension. What should at the very least be good, trashy fun is instead so morose
and depressed that there’s little pleasure to be had. While the novel shifts
between the three women’s perspectives, the film doesn’t bother to develop them
enough for the characters to register as actual flesh-and-blood people so much
as ciphers in the story’s examination of perception versus reality.
The entire
cast (including Lisa Kudrow in a small, but crucial
role) has demonstrated that they’re capable of much more than they’re asked to
do here. Emily Blunt has proven herself to be one of the most talented and
versatile actors of her generation, and there’s a depth to her portrayal of
alcoholic, broken Rachel that the film around her ultimately can’t support.
With its
“Rear Window” style plot and vaguely feminist themes, there’s some interesting
avenues the story’s premise might have explored — about how women are
encouraged to measure themselves against one another, determining their success
by how well they can perform the duties of wife and mother, and the inevitable
feeling of inadequacy if they don’t easily slip into those predetermined roles.
But the script never attempts to really dig into any of the ideas it attempts
to raise.
“The Girl on
the Train” eventually jumps the tracks as it chugs toward a climax that’s meant
to be pulse-pounding, but instead feels predictable and more than a little
silly. In the end, the destination doesn’t feel worth the trip.
Check back on Friday for
additional film coverage, including reviews of “Under the Shadow” and “A Man
Called Ove.”
This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2016.
