In The Girl on the Train, Emily Blunt stars as an alcoholic woman named Rachel who goes on endless train commutes between her suburban neighbourhood and Manhattan, whilst obsessively observing a seemingly perfect young couple who live just two houses down from Rachel’s ex-husband.
But one half of the perfect couple, Megan (Haley Bennet), goes missing and Rachel gets called in for questioning, she realizes there is much more to the night of drunken amnesia and the stolen glimpses of indiscretion from the train window than she ever could have imagined.
Director Tate Taylor was faced with a daunting challenge in bringing this story to the big screen. Creating a stand-alone film that would still please dedicated fans of the popular thriller is certainly intimidating. I can’t vouch for how well the film paid homage to the novel it was based on, but I did find the plot twist of the movie satisfyingly surprising. The entire premise of the film deals with solving the mystery of the missing woman, and the conclusion that comes of it makes every ambiguous moment click, in a way that is completely unexpected. Taylor’s direction gives very little away—in terms of true intentions or even character nuances—making for a completely unexpected turnaround, so if you go in without thinking it over or second-guessing too much, you will be pleasantly surprised.
[vsw id=”y5yk-HGqKmM” source=”youtube” width=”600″ height=”400″ autoplay=”no”]Blunt’s performance was stellar. Her portrayal of a bitterly wronged woman drowning her sorrows daily is done tastefully and realistically in a way that makes you feel abhorrence and pity in equal measure. She manages to flawlessly convince the audience of her character’s drunkenness without being comical or overly exaggerating. As the film progresses and we learn more of her character Rachel’s backstory, we start to understand her inner turmoil, and even her obsessions—she is not simply a struggling alcoholic, but a woman shrouded in sadness and complexity. Blunt manages to believably pull this off.
The supporting actors in the film also manage to render the well-rounded complexities of the other characters. The plot of this film is tied so inextricably to the lives and personalities of these characters that the story becomes quite immovable without them. Each of the actors manage to bring out the significance of their characters perfectly, whilst not giving any resolution away.
A dark, heavy ambience pervades the entire film, quite literally cloaking each scene in greyness. This, combined with the initially slow pace of the plot, makes it slightly hard to breathe regularly for much of the runtime. Several confusing time lags are injected into the plot, creating a somewhat jumpy screenplay in which little distinction exists between the end of the flashback and the resumption of the present. There are also one or two cringe-worthy, cliché lines spoken that contrast with the demeanour of the movie as a whole.
All in all, despite its fallbacks, The Girl on the Train is definitely worth watching if you’re into that kind of dark, moody drama—or if you have a few hours to kill.
