The Girl on the Train
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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