Movie Review: The Girl On The Train

If you grew up on erotic thrillers of the '90s, you already know that lust, jealousy and Michael Douglas are the kindling that spark cinematic murder. In The Girl on the Train, two out of three must suffice.

Based on Paula Hawkins' novel of the same name (you probably spotted someone flipping its very pages on a train this morning), Tate Taylor's feature continues the grand tradition of Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and countless other sleazy murder mysteries, in which previously sane-seeming people are revealed to be capable of grisly killings (usually to keep a marriage intact, or to protect a professional reputation).

But you'd be better off waiting for Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden, an erotic thriller that riffs on the all-time genre ideal, Les Diaboliques, before descending into deliciously filthy mind-boggling nuttery. (It opens October 13.) The Girl on the Train, in stark contrast, appears unhappy merely existing, and I'm not just referring to the title character.

The girl, Rachel, is played by Emily Blunt, and via flashback we see the disintegration of her marriage to the patient Tom (Justin Theroux); a result of her violent, self-destructive alcoholism and, eventually, his affair with the less complicated and more fertile Anna (Rebecca Ferguson).

Out of work and perpetually soused, Rachel rides the train from Westchester County to New York City (changed from the book's setting of London) everyday, mostly so she can pass by her old home, where Tom and Anna are building a serene life with their new baby.

A few doors down from Tom and Anna, Rachel finds another sex-hungry couple to live vicariously through: Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett) and her husband Scott (Luke Evans).

After several months of train-stop surveillance, she witnesses Megan cosying up to a mystery man (Édgar Ramírez), and Rachel becomes enraged by the adulterous slight.

Later that night, she follows Megan into an underpass in a drunken haze, waking up the next morning back home, covered in blood and vomit. A detective (Allison Janney) tells her Megan's gone missing and that Rachel was seen near the site of her disappearance. To clear her name - or her conscience - she begins investigating the mystery man, revealed to be Megan's therapist. Because what would this be without an ethically-dubious medical professional in the mix?

It's a creaky premise, in which we're meant to believe five prospective psychopathic killers are living within a brisk walk from one another, with their backyards facing a train track where a sixth can spy on them from afar. In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart could only find one potential murderer in his entire apartment block, and he had a telescope*.

Of course, we can pick out coincidences in the finest of pictures, including Gone Girl, David Fincher's 2014 adaptation of another irresistibly trashy book. The difference, however, is that Fincher - and the book's author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn - were intentionally turning the tropes inside out with their gonzo tale of vengeance. That flick is a deliriously weird and genuinely unexpected black comedy about marriage, compromise, mutual distrust and death-fakery. It also benefited greatly from Fincher's directorial finesse.

Tate Taylor - he of The Help - has less finesse. His clunky direction and super-serious storytelling inspires unintended giggles. In the desperation of conveying his lead's grief and panic, he often falls back on the trick of training his camera woozily on Blunt's tear-stained face. Pointing your lens at a talented actor isn't a bad idea per se, but at one point, early on, she looks directly down the barrel, and for a moment you think she's pulling a Jim Halpert: "Can you believe this film?"

Taylor depicts her scattershot memories with the familiar blur of all Midsomer Murder flashbacks. In the climax, he's utterly unsure how to frame for tension, despite innocents finding themselves trapped in a room with the guilty party. He is apparently good friends with Octavia Spencer in real life, and they are probably both delightful people; Fincher, meanwhile, drives his actors to tears. I know which one I want shooting my dirty revenge thrillers.

The Girl on the Train, adapted by screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, cannot seek to match Gone Girl's devilishness, so it strives for substance instead, attempting to weave themes of alcohol dependency and domestic violence around its driving narrative motor. It's admirable. It is not successful.

The cast do their best, though you can see each of them doing better work with finer material elsewhere (Ferguson in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation; Bennett in The Magnificent Seven; Janney in literally anything). Emily Blunt digs deep, as the movie's broken-hearted anchor, and for all her effort and deeply felt anguish, she deserves praise. Though she can't save The Girl on the Train from being bad, she'll have to settle for the fact it's not bad because of her.

Blunt's husband -  Jim Halpert himself, John Krasinski - has apparently seen The Devil Wears Prada 75 times. I reckon even he'd have a hard time on a second go around with The Girl on the Train.

2/5

The Girl on the Train is now showing. Rated MA15+ for strong themes and violence.

*It was technically a telephoto lens, but never let the truth get in the way of a good zinger.