The Girl on the Train is the latest suspenseful novel to be adapted to the silver screen and tells of Rachel, a girl who takes a daily commute on a train and peers into the passing communities crafting her own picturesque fantasies of the passerby's lives. A series of tangled events unfold and suddenly Rachel finds herself amidst a missing persons case that oddly involves many of those she's glimpsed upon in the train.
I'm being purposely vague considering The Girl on the Train's reliance and heavy abundance of twists and turns. The Girl on the Train was deemed by many before it's release to be this year's Gone Girl and after seeing it I can confirm there are some thematic parallels, similar plot points, and both have their fair share of shocking plot twists. Otherwise, they're vastly different films/novels with scarce similarities.
Tate Taylor directs the dramatic thriller and with cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen frames some compelling visuals of the intricate events with a more muted color palette added in post production. Taylor successfully invokes suspense, but in some of the film's more bizarre moments fails to portray the actors in a sincere demeanor. Danny Elfman synth-driven compositions are an appropriate accompaniment to the melodrama and leave a lasting effect of anxiety throughout. I was shocked to learn the film's score was from Dany Elfman because typically his scores are more extraordinary while this orchestration consisted of fairly good run-of-the mill compositions.
The screenplay penned by Erin Cressida Wilson adapting Paula Hawkins' novel manages to put the audience on the edge of their seat, but find itself muddled in non-chronological storytelling. The script occasionally flashes back to provide glimpses of the characters' background and the flashbacks are evident but the return to the present day was inconspicuous. The plot twists found in the screenplay range from predictable to surprising, but most typically the latter. The first act makes the lead female characters quite unsympathetic by painting them in a negative light, making the characters feel cold and distant, and it's only in the second act that the characters are redeemed.
With name talent in the three lead female roles I was psyched to see what these actresses would have to offer consider how impressed I've been with much of their recent work where they each had scene stealing turns (i.e. Rebecca Ferguson in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Hayley Bennet in The Magnificent Seven (2016), and Emily Blunt in a great number of things including Sicario, Live. Die. Repeat., and Into The Woods).
However, it turned out that Emily Blunt was the only one to make any impression here. Blunt handles the unreliable characterization of Rachel exceptionally well. Blunt perfectly embodies an emotionally vulnerable, fractured alcoholic and showcases a wide acting range that I feel would be worthy of an Oscar nomination if the Best Actress race weren't so crowded this year.
Hayley Bennet plays Megan as over-sexualized in surprisingly specific strokes that the role calls for and Rebecca Ferguson's Anna is a thinly sketched concerned wife and mother. Both are fine in the capacity used but neither actress lived up to their true potential in my eyes when their previous performances are taken into consideration but I feel that it's either a result of the lacking source material or poor direction. The other supporting performances are hardly worth mentioning, for either lack of effort or minimal screen time, but include Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Édgar Ramírez, and Allison Janey.
In summary, The Girl on the Train is filled with bland performances, mediocre direction, and it's all headed by a messy screenplay. The Girl on the Train's saving graces are an outstanding performance from Emily Blunt, a Danny Elfman score, and some unforeseen plot twists but it's not quite enough for me to recommend you see in theaters, if you're truly interested check it out with the home media release.
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