The Girl on the Train
(2016)What you see can hurt you.
Emily Blunt (Sicario) leads this adaptation of Paula Hawkins' hit mystery novel, from the director of the Oscar-nominated The Help.... More
Still reeling from her divorce, Rachel (Blunt) gazes outside her train window each day, pausing to consider the lives of the seemingly perfect couple in a house where the commute regularly stops at. But one day, she witnesses something shocking that will lead her down a tangled web of lies, betrayals and murder.Hide
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Directed by Tate Taylor
Starring Emily Blunt, Hayley Bennett, Luke Evans, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Edgar Ramirez, Allison Janney, Lisa Kudrow
Written by Erin Cressida Wilson (based on the novel by Paula Hawkins)
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The Girl on the Train
BY Newt superstar
Aside from Emily Blunt's powerful performance as a recovering alcoholic, and a frantic last act, this is a pretty forgettable movie - one that plays out like a straight to day-time TV movie. A discount Nocturnal Animals but I'm guessing the book is a much better story
BY cinemusefilm superstar
Rachel’s alcoholism started when IVF failed and it eventually ended her dream marriage. She lives off her alimony and spends her time as a train passenger voyeur who watches other people in fantasy worlds while she sips vodka out of a sports bottle. Every day she rides past her former neighbourhood just gazing out windows and she becomes fixated on a couple that appear to have everything. When she notices a new man on the scene she is driven compulsively to explore what happened. In the process, we become witness to a triple set of simmering relationships that turn dangerous when a babysitter’s body is found gruesomely buried nearby. Rachel is implicated when, unable to account for her whereabouts, she becomes a murder suspect.
Constant inebriation makes an unreliable narrator and Rachel’s hold on reality regularly dissolves while frequent flashbacks create disorientation amidst the detail of who is being unfaithful or untruthful with whom. The narrative structure is both complex and well-constructed. It is like a jigsaw puzzle being assembled by first laying out the most distant pieces in isolation, then randomly laying out more on the board’s periphery. All the time we are uncertain whether Rachel is sane or sozzled as, one by one, clues about what happened on the night of the murder are laid out with surgical precision in the finest tradition of a Hitchcock thriller.
Emily Blunt’s performance drives this film despite the incongruity of her unexplained Britishness in America. A drunk narrator does not readily earn audience sympathy, but Rachel’s pained eyes and curious mournfulness are engaging. The soundtrack adds a psychological thriller edge to a well-paced tale despite Rachel’s permanent introspection. While the film has a strong support cast, no other character is developed beyond a two-dimensional persona in what is a female-driven story with a spectacular finale of feminine vengeance. The last piece of the jigsaw drops in with a satisfying thud.Hide
BY christinec superstar
The movie chops back and forward in time so much its just annoying. Esp in the beginning when 2 actresses look similar and you wonder if it's the same person in a different time. The first half I was wondering if I cared much about the story. Emily Blunt very good as always but her character was also just annoying for the first half. The second half made the film worthwhile but not as a recommendation.I didnt read the book so wasnt affected by that.
BY Nicthechic lister
I didn't understand why the location was changed from the UK like it was in the book to the US for the film. The houses backing onto railway tracks is more a part of society in the UK.
But I enjoyed the film despite this, Emily Blunt was fantastic, the film is worth it just to see her performance.
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The Press Reviews
45%
of critics recommend.
Rotten Tomatoes Score. More reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Fortunately, Blunt keeps the film anchored. Playing drunk convincingly is no mean feat, but she cracks it, maintaining our sympathy for a character who has gradually slipped towards becoming a functioning alcoholic. Full Review
The puzzle of how the various personal and narrative pieces will eventually fit together exerts a smidgen of interest, but the characters are so dour and un-dimensional as to invite no curiosity about them. Full Review
As a big-screen thriller, The Girl on a Train is just so-so, but taken as 112 minutes of upscale psychodramatic confessional bad-behavior porn, it generates a voyeuristic zing that's sure to carry audiences along. Full Review
Despite the occasional shot of piss-soaked knickers, there's something a bit too tasteful about The Girl on the Train. Full Review
Sadly this mystery fails to intrigue. Full Review
It has about as many twists and turns as an L. The third act of a movie shouldn't make you feel as though the first two acts were a waste of time. Full Review
Undeniably gripping. Full Review
Blunt's gutsy performance keeps The Girl on the Train on track while so much is trying to derail it. Full Review
I'm disappointed, the overall experience almost pedestrian, and this story is far, far from pedestrian. Full Review
BY Matt Glasby Flicks Writer
Rushed to the screen to capitalise on the success of Paula Hawkins’ 2015 source novel, The Girl On The Train appears to have been written on one, juddering to its destination faster than the speed of sense.... More
Tormented by the picture-perfect lives she glimpses during her morning commute – including her ex-husband Justin Theroux and his new wife Rebecca Ferguson – alcoholic Emily Blunt finds herself embroiled in a missing persons case when naughty nanny Hayley Bennet goes missing.
Anonymously directed by Tate Taylor (The Help), Girl has problems from the off. Transplanted to New York from London, the milieu never really convinces. The female characters, whether hot-mess, home-wrecker or hussy, are all pretty and sad; the males (including Luke Evans and Édgar Ramírez) brooding and blandly interchangeable. It's like an alternate universe Friends: "The One Where They Move To The Suburbs And Start Boffing Each Other", perhaps.
Although adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote the excellent Secretary, the script is awful, with cloth-eared dialogue (“I could never find the words to describe how I felt when I read that email…” says Blunt with some difficulty) and a fondness for showing and telling us every tiny detail. “I tend to smile when I’m nervous,” says Bennet, smiling nervously. New mom Ferguson’s complaints about the trials of farmer’s markets, meanwhile, will raise titters among all but the most cosseted viewers.
Entertainingly bad to begin with – think Desperate Housewives meets 50 Shades Of Grey – it eventually settles down into the kind of so-so pot boiler that employs someone else to boil the pots. If you’re looking for an airplane read for the eyes, it might pass muster. If not, look away now.Hide
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