The Girl on the Train

Ever since it was published as a bestselling novel, The Girl on the Train has been compared to Gone Girl.  Both are mysteries surrounding well-to-do couples, both rely on multiple narrators, and both deal somewhat with a media firestorm surrounding the disappearance of a lovely young woman. (Although, Gone Girl played this angle much stronger than Girl on the Train does.) So, it's only natural that the film adaptations are being compared by many critics, and that's kind of a loaded debate.  Gone Girl had the advantage of David Fincher in the director's chair, and an Oscar-caliber cast including Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.  This film has a strong cast as well, but its storytelling is somewhat less assured.  It's definitely entertaining, but it feels more like a B-level thriller than the A-List production that Gillian Flynn's novel got in 2014.

Director Tate Taylor (The Help) and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson have done an admirable, but not exactly perfect, job of bringing Paula Hawkins' mystery story to the big screen.  They seem to struggle a bit with the book's narrative, which frequently shifts the point of view of who is telling the story, as well as jumps about to different points in time.  This works on the page, but in cinematic form, it can seem somewhat unnecessarily confused and kind of cluttered.  Taylor also seems to enjoy playing up the melodrama of the story, so that it often comes across as a very stagey, almost overwrought soap opera at times.  There are even moments when it feels like a Lifetime TV movie with a bigger budget and four letter words in the dialogue.  But then, there are some subtler moments that he gets just right, and that's ultimately what makes the film work.  That, and the wonderful lead performance from Emily Blunt.

She is what makes the movie captivating to watch, despite its flaws.  Her portrayal of lead heroine Rachel is heartbreaking, sympathetic, and very real.  Even when the movie is trying to play up the melodrama of her situation, she remains as grounded as possible.  It's a fantastic performance.  Her character serves as the entry point to the film's complicated and multi-layered narrative.  Rachel is a fairly aimless woman as the story opens.  She's a divorced, unemployed alcoholic who rides a train into New York City everyday, just so she can fool her friends into thinking she still has a job and somewhere to go.  Along the train's route, there's a house that she likes to watch that holds what she believes to be a perfect couple - the pretty and blonde Megan (Haley Bennett, also very good here) and her husband Scott (Luke Evans).  They seem so much in love when she sees them in their backyard or out on the porch, Rachel likes to fantasize about what their lives must be like.  She knows nothing about them, but she envies them.  That's why it feels like a betrayal one morning when Rachel happens to see Megan in the arms of another man one morning.

There are further complications.  Megan and Scott happen to live just a couple doors away from the house that Rachel used to share with her ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux).  He now lives there happily with his new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) and their baby girl.  Rachel has a history of unpleasant alcohol-fueled visits to her ex-husband's house, so she is not welcome there.  Everything comes to a head when Rachel decides to make one of those visits, and ends up blacking out from being drunk, and having no memory of what happened.  When she awakens, her clothes are bloody, and there are reports on the news that Megan has gone missing.  With the police wanting to question Rachel what she was doing drunk and aggressive in the neighborhood the night of the disappearance, she will have to find a way to uncover the truth of what happened that night.

The Girl on the Train has a constantly twisting plot, with a "reality vs. fantasy" theme of people who seem to have perfect lives, only to reveal darker secrets within.  And while it's never quite as scandalous as it seems to think it is, the movie is never boring, thanks to a quick pace and a constant sense that there is more than what we are being told.  I was engaged for the most part, even though I did see some of the twists coming. (I started to read the book, but never finished it, so I walked into the film without knowing how the mystery turned out.) The secrets and revelations are slow to come at first, but by the last 20 minutes, everything flies at us so fast it could almost cause whiplash to the audience.  The final moments of the film are disappointing, relying on "battered woman in peril" cliches, but up until that point, I was drawn into the story. 

The cast is what holds the movie together, even when it dips into B-movie thriller territory from time to time.  I've already talked about Blunt, but everyone else is very good here, especially Bennett as a young woman who thinks she is in control, but finds out too late that she is in over her head.  Even when the movie is veering into lurid melodrama territory, they remain consistent and strong.  And as I mentioned, this is an interesting story that did grab my attention and held onto it for a majority of its running time.  Even if I knew it wasn't as good as it could have been, I was still enjoying it.  This is a flawed, but well-executed movie.  Perhaps the movie would have been better served with a director with past thriller experience, as Tate Taylor has none.  He is able to create some atmosphere and sets an appropriately dark mood when it's required, but he also has a tendency to play up the drama also, and has his actors play to the rafters during some of their big scenes.

I would say that the movie stays afloat, and I am recommending it.  But, anyone expecting something close to the masterful adaptation of Gone Girl we got two years ago will be disappointed.  Fans who embraced the novel are likely to be satisfied, but if you're not familiar, you'll probably be confused while watching it by the way the movie jumps around different points of views and points of time.  When it's over, you may wonder what the fuss over the book was about.  But I suspect you'll have fun going back over the story in your head, and figuring everything out.

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