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  • 2021 Films
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • The Marksman
    • 1 Star >
      • Outside the Wire
  • Cinema Clash Podcast
  • 2020 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • The Outpost
      • Promising Young Woman
      • The Vast of Night
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • The Assistant
      • The Burnt Orange Heresy
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      • Da 5 Bloods
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    • 3 Stars >
      • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
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    • 2.5 Stars >
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    • 2 Stars >
      • Blow the Man Down
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    • 1 Star >
      • Honest Thief
  • 2019 Films
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      • 1917
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      • Alita: Battle Angel
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    • 3 Stars >
      • Ash is the Purest White
      • Avengers: Endgame
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      • Brittany Runs A Marathon
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      • Gloria Bell
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      • Knock Down the House
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    • 2.5 Stars >
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    • 2 Stars >
      • The Art of Racing in the Rain
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    • 1.5 Stars >
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      • Terminator: Dark Fate
    • 1 Star >
      • Men in Black: International
      • Miss Bala
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    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Happy Death Day 2U
  • 2018 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
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      • Roma
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      • Mission: Impossible - Fallout
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      • Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
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    • 1 Star >
      • Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
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      • Born Guilty
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  • 2017 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Blade Runner 2049
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      • Wind River
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      • Detroit
      • Donald Cried
      • Faces Places (Visages, villages)
      • Frantz
      • Get Out
      • I, Tonya
      • An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
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    • 3 Stars >
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    • 2.5 Stars >
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    • 2 Stars >
      • Beauty and the Beast
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      • Leap!
      • Logan
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    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Before I Fall
      • Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
      • The Dinner
      • Everything, Everything
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      • Fifty Shades Darker
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      • It Comes at Night
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    • 1 Star >
      • Rings
      • The Space Between Us
      • xXx: Return of Xander Cage
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Buster's Mal Heart
  • 2016 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Captain Fantastic
      • Hell or High Water
      • I Am Not Your Negro
      • Jackie
      • Krisha
      • La La Land
      • A Monster Calls
      • Paterson
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    • 3.5 Stars >
      • The Accountant
      • Cameraperson
      • Deadpool
      • Embrace of the Serpent
      • Finding Dory
      • Hail, Caesar!
      • Miss Sloane
      • Moonlight
      • Nocturnal Animals
      • Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    • 3 Stars >
      • Allied
      • Arrival
      • Author: The JT LeRoy Story
      • The Birth of a Nation
      • The Conjuring 2
      • Creative Control
      • Doctor Strange
      • The Eagle Huntress
      • The Edge of Seventeen
      • Eye in the Sky
      • The First Monday in May
      • Green Room
      • Hacksaw Ridge
      • Ixcanul
      • The Jungle Book
      • Keanu
      • Live by Night
      • Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
      • The Magnificent Seven
      • Miles Ahead
      • Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
      • A Monster with a Thousand Heads
      • The Nice Guys
      • Passengers
      • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
      • Star Trek Beyond
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      • War Dogs
      • Wiener-Dog
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • Café Society
      • Captain America: Civil War
      • Christine
      • The Clan
      • Deepwater Horizon
      • Eddie the Eagle
      • Equals
      • The Girl on the Train
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      • Lion
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      • Queen of Katwe
      • Race
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      • Storks
      • Sunset Song
      • Trolls
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      • Zootopia
    • 2 Stars >
      • Alice Through the Looking Glass
      • American Pastoral
      • Bad Moms
      • The BFG
      • Blair Witch
      • The Choice
      • Dough
      • Everybody Wants Some!!
      • The Finest Hours
      • The Legend of Tarzan
      • The Light Between Oceans
      • The Secret Life of Pets
      • Suicide Squad
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • The 5th Wave
      • Allegiant
      • Angry Birds
      • Bad Santa 2
      • The Boss
      • Central Intelligence
      • Ghostbusters
      • How to Be Single
      • The Huntsman: Winter's War
      • Ip Man 3
      • Zoolander 2
    • 1 Star >
      • Gods of Egypt
      • Ice Age: Collision Course
      • My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
      • Now You See Me 2
      • Ratchet & Clank
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Ben-Hur
      • Norm of the North
      • Ride Along 2
  • 2015 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • The Big Short
      • Ex Machina
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      • The Tribe
      • While We're Young
      • Youth
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • Best of Enemies
      • Bridge of Spies
      • Brooklyn
      • Clouds of Sils Maria
      • Concussion
      • The End of the Tour
      • The Hateful Eight
      • Inside Out
      • It Follows
      • Mad Max: Fury Road
      • The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
      • The Martian
      • Mistress America
      • The Revenant
      • Room
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      • Sisters
      • Spotlight
      • Star Wars: The Force Awakens
      • Straight Outta Compton
      • Truth
    • 3 Stars >
      • The Age of Adaline
      • Avengers: Age of Ultron
      • Black Mass
      • Carol
      • The Cut
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      • Fresh Dressed
      • The Good Dinosaur
      • Grandma
      • James White
      • Janis: Little Girl Blue
      • Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
      • McFarland, USA
      • Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
      • Merchants of Doubt
      • MERU
      • Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
      • Mustang
      • Pan
      • The Peanuts Movie
      • Pitch Perfect 2
      • Pixels
      • San Andreas
      • The Second Mother
      • Son of Saul
      • Spectre
      • Trainwreck
      • We Are Your Friends
      • Woman in Gold
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • American Ultra
      • Anomalisa
      • Ant-Man
      • The Assassin
      • The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
      • Boulevard
      • Crimson Peak
      • The Danish Girl
      • Far from the Madding Crowd
      • Finders Keepers
      • Furious 7
      • The Gunman
      • Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
      • In the Heart of the Sea
      • Jurassic World
      • Kingsman: The Secret Service
      • Listen to Me Marlon
      • Macbeth
      • The New Rijksmuseum
      • No Escape
      • Spy
      • The Visit
      • A Walk in the Woods
      • The Water Diviner
      • The Wolfpack
    • 2 Stars >
      • The 33
      • Aloft
      • Black Sea
      • Do I Sound Gay?
      • Fifty Shades of Grey
      • Focus
      • Freeheld
      • Get Hard
      • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
      • Joy
      • Minions
      • Mississippi Grind
      • The Night Before
      • The Salvation
      • The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
      • Seventh Son
      • Terminator Genisys
      • Tomorrowland
      • True Story
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Chappie
      • Desert Dancer
      • Hot Tub Time Machine 2
      • The Divergent Series: Insurgent
      • Jupiter Ascending
      • Maggie
      • Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
      • Run All Night
      • Ted 2
      • Vacation
    • 1 Star >
      • The Lazarus Effect
      • Magic Mike XXL
      • The Transporter Refueled
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • The Gallows
  • 2014 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Calvary
      • A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
      • Inherent Vice
      • The LEGO Movie
      • Life Itself
      • A Most Violent Year
      • Mr. Turner
      • The Theory of Everything
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • American Sniper
      • Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
      • The Boxtrolls
      • Boyhood
      • The Equalizer
      • Fury
      • Gone Girl
      • Guardians of the Galaxy
      • The Imitation Game
      • Like Father, Like Son
      • Mommy
      • Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
      • Particle Fever
      • Selma
      • Top Five
      • Whiplash
    • 3 Stars >
      • 22 Jump Street
      • Alive Inside
      • Beside Still Waters
      • The Book of Life
      • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
      • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: THEM
      • Draft Day
      • Edge of Tomorrow
      • Get on Up
      • Godzilla
      • The Grand Budapest Hotel
      • The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
      • I Am Ali
      • The Judge
      • Kill the Messenger
      • Locke
      • Love Is Strange
      • Nas: Time Is Illmatic
      • Night Moves
      • The November Man
      • The One I Love
      • The Overnighters
      • The Raid 2
      • Rosewater
      • Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
      • St. Vincent
      • Still Alice
      • Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
      • Two Days, One Night
      • Unbroken
      • Under the Skin
      • Wild
      • X-Men: Days of Future Past
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • 3 Days to Kill
      • About Last Night
      • Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
      • Art and Craft
      • As Above, So Below
      • Begin Again
      • Blood Ties
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      • Divergent
      • The Expendables 3
      • Fading Gigolo
      • Foxcatcher
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      • Horns
      • Horrible Bosses 2
      • The Hundred-Foot Journey
      • Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
      • Jersey Boys
      • Listen Up Philip
      • Magic in the Moonlight
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      • Men, Women & Children
      • A Million Ways to Die in the West
      • The Monuments Men
      • Mr. Peabody & Sherman
      • Muppets Most Wanted
      • Need for Speed
      • Non-Stop
      • Point and Shoot
      • RoboCop
      • Tracks
      • Transcendence
      • Veronica Mars
      • Winter's Tale
    • 2 Stars >
      • 300: Rise of an Empire
      • Alan Partridge
      • The Amazing Spider-Man 2
      • The Art of the Steal
      • Big Hero 6
      • Blended
      • Exodus: Gods and Kings
      • The French Minister
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      • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
      • Into the Storm
      • Into the Woods
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      • Lucy
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      • Noah
      • The Nut Job
      • Oculus
      • Rio 2
      • That Awkward Moment
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      • When the Game Stands Tall
      • Wish I Was Here
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Big Eyes
      • The Fault in Our Stars
      • I, Frankenstein
      • Pompeii
      • Transformers: Age of Extinction
    • 1 Star >
      • Brick Mansions
      • The Identical
      • Ride Along
      • Son of God
      • Tusk
      • Vampire Academy
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Left Behind
      • The Legend of Hercules
      • Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
    • Zero Stars >
      • A Haunted House 2
  • 2013 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • 12 Years A Slave
      • Frances Ha
      • The Gatekeepers
      • Gravity
      • Her
      • Lone Survivor
      • Much Ado About Nothing
      • Stoker
      • We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • All Is Lost
      • August: Osage County
      • Before Midnight
      • The Bling Ring
      • Captain Phillips
      • Fruitvale Station
      • God Loves Uganda
      • The Great Beauty
      • Inside Llewyn Davis
      • The Patience Stone
      • The Wolf of Wall Street
      • You're Next
    • 3 Stars >
      • Ain't Them Bodies Saints
      • American Hustle
      • The Company You Keep
      • Dead Man Down
      • Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
      • Don Jon
      • The East
      • Ender's Game
      • The Great Gatsby
      • The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
      • The Invisible Woman
      • Iron Man 3
      • Labor Day
      • LUV
      • Man of Steel
      • No
      • Oblivion
      • Pacific Rim
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      • Saving Mr. Banks
      • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
      • Side Effects
      • Star Trek Into Darkness
      • Thanks for Sharing
      • Thor: The Dark World
      • Tim's Vermeer
      • Upside Down
      • Warm Bodies
      • World War Z
      • The World's End
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • Beautiful Creatures
      • Beyond the Hills
      • The Book Thief
      • Carrie
      • Emperor
      • Fast & Furious 6
      • Gloria
      • The Iceman
      • In a World...
      • Love Is All You Need
      • Mama
      • Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
      • Nebraska
      • Oldboy
      • Olympus Has Fallen
      • Prisoners
      • The Reluctant Fundamentalist
      • Rush
      • Snitch
      • This Is the End
      • Trance
    • 2 Stars >
      • Byzantium
      • The Counselor
      • Disconnect
      • G.I. Joe: Retaliation
      • Gangster Squad
      • Grudge Match
      • Jack the Giant Slayer
      • Machete Kills
      • Now You See Me
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Drinking Buddies
      • The Family
      • Girl Most Likely
      • Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
      • The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
      • The Lone Ranger
      • Parker
    • 1 Star >
      • The Hangover Part III
      • A Haunted House
      • John Dies at the End
      • The Last Stand
      • Oz the Great and Powerful
      • Spring Breakers
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Escape from Tomorrow
      • Evil Dead
      • A Good Day to Die Hard
  • 2012 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Argo
      • Bernie
      • Cloud Atlas
      • Django Unchained
      • Lincoln
      • Take this Waltz
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • 5 Broken Cameras
      • Amour
      • Arbitrage
      • Chronicle
      • Looper
      • Moonrise Kingdom
      • The Perks of Being a Wallflower
      • The Queen of Versailles
      • The Raid: Redemption
      • Skyfall
      • The Woman in the Fifth
    • 3 Stars >
      • Act of Valor
      • American Reunion
      • Anna Karenina
      • The Avengers
      • Beasts of the Southern Wild
      • Celeste & Jesse Forever
      • The Dark Knight Rises
      • Frankenweenie
      • Haywire
      • Hitchcock
      • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
      • The Master
      • Not Fade Away
      • Oslo, August 31st
      • The Other Dream Team
      • The Sessions
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • Silver Linings Playbook
      • Sleepwalk With Me
      • To Rome with Love
      • Your Sister's Sister
      • Zero Dark Thirty
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • The Amazing Spider-Man
      • Farewell, My Queen
      • The Hunger Games
      • The Oranges
      • Robot & Frank
      • Safe House
      • Safety Not Guaranteed
    • 2 Stars >
      • The Deep Blue Sea
      • Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
      • Taken 2
      • The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • The Bourne Legacy
      • Damsels in Distress
      • Lockout
      • Underworld: Awakening
      • Wrath of the Titans
    • 1 Star >
      • 2 Days in New York
  • 2011 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Another Earth
      • The Artist
      • Hugo
      • Midnight in Paris
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • 50/50
      • The Devil's Double
      • Drive
      • The Hedgehog
      • The Help
      • The Ides of March
      • J. Edgar
      • The Mill and the Cross
      • My Afternoons with Margueritte
      • My Week with Marilyn
      • Mysteries of Lisbon
      • The Skin I Live In
      • Super 8
      • Young Adult
    • 3 Stars >
      • Albert Nobbs
      • Anonymous
      • Attack the Block
      • Bellflower
      • Circumstance
      • Colombiana
      • The Future
      • Happy, Happy
      • Incendies
      • Jane Eyre
      • Limitless
      • Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
      • Moneyball
      • The Names of Love
      • Page One: Inside the New York Times
      • Pianomania
      • Queen to Play
      • Rise of the Planet of the Apes
      • Senna
      • Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
      • Tower Heist
      • The Trip
      • Undefeated
      • A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
      • The Way
      • The Whistleblower
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • Captain America: The First Avenger
      • Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
      • Crazy, Stupid, Love
      • Griff the Invisible
      • The Guard
      • Hanna
      • The Interrupters
      • The Iron Lady
      • Killer Elite
      • Love Crime
      • The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby
      • Margin Call
      • The Tree of Life
      • The Turin Horse
    • 2 Stars >
      • Bad Teacher
      • Blackthorn
      • Cowboys & Aliens
      • The Debt
      • The Descendants
      • Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
      • The Double Hour
      • Higher Ground
      • Immortals
      • In Darkness
      • Shame
      • Take Shelter
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Brighton Rock
      • Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
      • Martha Marcy May Marlene
      • One Day
      • Priest
      • Restless
    • 1 Star >
      • The Three Musketeers
      • Toast
      • Transformers: Dark of the Moon
  • Misc...
    • 2020 AFI DOCs Film Festival
    • 2020 Academy Award Best Documentary Short Films
    • 2019 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2019 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2018 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2017 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2016 Middleburg Film Festival
  • Review Index
  • About Me

The Girl on the Train

Picture

Directed by: Tate Taylor
Written by: Erin Cressida Wilson - Based on the novel by Paula Hawkins
Starring: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Édgar Ramirez, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, Darren Goldstein, Lisa Kudrow
Mystery/Thriller - 112 min          Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Oct 2016

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Paula Hawkins’ novel The Girl on the Train hit bookstores the same week Erin Cressida Wilson turned in a screenplay adaptation of it.  Hint, that is unusual.  Sounds to me like Dreamworks spied a novel with Gone Girl appeal, a story combining a mystery whodunit, an unreliable narrator, and some sex thrown in for some cheap R-rated spice.  The Girl on the Train does indeed feel Gone Girl-lite.  The mystery inhabits a slot toward the Agatha Christie end of the spectrum as it unfolds in formulaic installments where the plot leads us to believe so and so did it, but maybe that guy did it, and by the end you get to choose your own adventure before the big reveal.  Director Tate Taylor creates tension, makes us hold our breath during suspenseful scenes, but wraps it up in a basic cable climax straining credulity.

There is a good chance your movie is adapted from a novel when you notice the main character talks in voiceover, repeatedly.  The Girl on the Train follows three leading ladies and they each get extensive monologue time, especially our main protagonist, Rachel (Emily Blunt, The Huntsman: Winter’s War).  Rachel is a mess and Tate Taylor plays with the audience through her dishing out the story’s bits and pieces to string us along.  Rachel takes the train into Manhattan every day and fixates on the back of a couple houses in an upscale suburb.  One house in particular contains a gorgeous twenty-something female who likes to stretch in very revealing clothing on the balcony.  Sometimes she cuddles with her husband by the fire pit in the backyard while Rachel commutes home.

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A recent and very unwilling divorcé, Rachel fails to adapt to single life.  She descends into a desperate alcoholic who downs a daily fifth of vodka disguised in a water bottle.  She spies on this house at what appears from the outside to be the perfect couple and feels comforted there are at least two people in the world soaking up marital bliss.  What we find out a bit later, and more than hinting at Rachel’s shady unreliability, is that she used to live on this street; two houses down by the way.  When she peeks in those windows, she gags watching her ex-husband smooch his former mistress now wife and their infant bundle of joy.  Anna (Rebecca Ferguson, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation) is a stressed out new mom who earns Rachel’s hatred by occupying the space she carved out in the world.

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Yikes - this is not healthy behavior Rachel.  Rachel’s already crumbling psyche shatters one morning when from the train she spies the balcony dream wife kissing another man.  Oh no!  Even Rachel’s dreams conspire against her.  The cheating wife, Megan (Haley Bennett, The Magnificent Seven) disappears soon after and Rachel latches on to a lifeline.  She can help; think of a stumbling, slurring Nancy Drew.  She tells Megan’s husband (Luke Evans, High-Rise) there is another man in Megan’s life.  She informs Detective Riley (Allison Janney, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) of the same thing.  So why is everyone looking at Rachel as if she is insane?  Here is where The Girl on the Train transforms into a blackout mystery.  Rachel was there when Megan went missing, but she can’t remember what happened.

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Did Rachel see who did it?  Did Rachel herself do it?  Taylor deliberately tip-toes around dribbling out plot point after plot point as the audience sits back and examines the clues for themselves.  There are so many scenes on the train going back and forth from the city we have ample time to hypothesize.  Weaving in and out of the mystery is also an addiction drama.  Rachel is not in denial she has a problem.  Waking up with no memories of the night before, attending AA meetings saying she is one day sober, and alienating every single person around her are clear signs she recognizes she is in trouble.  How is one ever supposed to remember the scene of the crime through the persistent fuzz of booze?

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Tate Taylor is no stranger to adaptations of female-centric stories.  He directed the Best Picture nominated film version of The Help.  He was more constrained in telling that tale of oppressed African American maids in the Deep South.  Here, he lines up a half dozen witnesses in various parts of the story and makes them all suspects.  The most effective of these is Haley Bennett as Megan; she knocks it out of the park.  Megan’s monologues flow through her long speeches to her therapist (Édgar Ramirez, Joy) who is also a suspect because their relationship may have exceeded doctor/patient boundaries.  Megan nonchalantly tells her shrink and us she is a liar; she lies to her doctor, to her husband, and to her friends.  Oh great, another unreliable narrator.

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The Girl on the Train is dark, but it is not as cunning as Gone Girl.  Themes of voyeurism, loneliness, and addiction color our perceptions of the characters, but the mystery settles down into predictable Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple territory.  It’s also a bit claustrophobic.  Director of Photography Charlotte Bruus Christensen (Far From the Madding Crowd) spends so much time in extreme close-ups on Rachel and Megan I feel I know their pore structure better than they do.  To make American audiences more comfortable with the characters and material, adaptor Erin Cressida Wilson shifted the location.  The girl was originally in London; now she is on the Metro-North rail line riding from Westchester County to Manhattan.  Taylor kept the British actress in Emily Blunt and I suppose agreed with Dreamworks the film’s profits would be stronger if Americans didn’t feel the story was too foreign.  The Girl on the Train spent a year on the bestseller lists and a sizable portion of people you know read the book; therefore, prepare yourself for the inevitable, “The book was better” conversations.  I have not read it, nor did I read Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, but cinematically, one of these stories is firmly on the tracks and the other chugs around missing a few stops along the way.

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