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By Robert Scucci
| Published
The biggest emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on in a minute centers on 2016’s The Girl on the Train. For one thing, I have my reservations about psychological thrillers with titles that are just a little too on the nose, like Domestic Disturbance or The Woman in Cabin 10. Still, the synopsis sounded solid, so when I saw it on Netflix, I figured I’d give it a go. Within three minutes I hated The Girl on the Train. Against my better judgment, I pressed forward, willing to give it a chance, and suddenly everything clicked.
The Girl on the Train is a tough film to assess because it’s adequately acted, shot well, expertly paced, and has more twists than you can reasonably imagine. However, for all of that to work, we have to sit through a first act that’s heavy on exposition dumps in the form of voiceover narration that makes you think, “Literally nobody talks like that.”
Then again, this is an adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ 2015 novel of the same name, and that’s exactly what those narrations sound like. They’ll take you out of the movie for a minute, but then they get out of the way. By the time you reach the third act, you’ll realize this setup was absolutely necessary, and honestly, I can’t think of a better way to do it.
At least to me, this movie is pretty rough until its characters are established. But once they’re let loose and the story develops, it becomes one of the best thrillers I’ve seen in recent memory as far as the mystery goes.
A Masterclass In Unreliability
The Girl on the Train centers on Emily Blunt’s Rachel Watson, who, since her divorce and losing her job, rides the train into and out of Manhattan every day just to pass the time. She can also drink anybody under the table, which is why her life is so miserable at the film’s outset. During her commute, she sneaks glances at her old home, where her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) now lives with his new wife, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Living next door are Scott (Luke Evans) and Megan (Haley Bennett), a couple Rachel barely knows but latches onto because she wants the life they have.
While riding the rails, Rachel gets ignorantly drunk. I cannot stress this enough. She blacks out for sport, leaves unhinged voicemails on Tom’s phone, and makes empty threats, having very little recollection of her behavior when she wakes up at her best friend Cathy’s (Laura Prepon) house, where she’s filled in on how insane she acted the night before.
When Rachel witnesses Megan having an affair, she loses her mind and gets off the train to confront her, only to wake up the next day at home covered in blood, learning that Megan has been reported missing. From this point forward, things look bad for Rachel, who tries to confide in Scott and even attempts to get Tom and Anna to hear her out. Through these conversations, we learn just how destructive Rachel’s behavior was before her divorce, but as a viewer, something doesn’t sit right.
Rachel doesn’t seem like a violent person. Is she a total mess because of her vices and mental health crisis? Absolutely. But it also seems like everybody who knows her understands this and uses her imperfect memory to shape the narrative however they want. Rachel, who’s always either about to enter another blackout or wake up from one, has to take what she’s told at face value, but remains cooperative with Detective DS. Riley (Allison Janney), who simply wants to solve the missing person’s case.
Emily Blunt Kills It
Rachel is such a complex character, and by the time The Girl on the Train reaches its conclusion, you’ll have a newfound appreciation for Emily Blunt if you didn’t respect her acting chops already. The blackout sequences are genuinely hard to watch, and the camera work deserves credit too, from the blurry close-ups of Rachel’s face to the first-person shots as she tries to piece together what actually happened the night Megan disappeared.
Each time she revisits these memories, they’re slightly different, but she maintains her innocence because there was another person at the scene whom she can’t quite identify. Emily Blunt not only looks but acts the part during these sequences, as well as the flashback scenes, where you’re never quite sure if they depict what actually happened or simply what Rachel has been told happened by the people around her who have grown tired of her self-destructive behavior.
Outside of the film’s initial setup, The Girl on the Train is one of the better thrillers I’ve seen recently involving a tragically unreliable narrator who’s been through the wringer but insists she’ll eventually be vindicated. While I’m not a fan of how the film opens, I honestly can’t think of a better way to efficiently deliver the information the audience needs in such a short amount of time so the conflict can be set in motion.
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN SCORE
As of this writing, The Girl on the Train is streaming on Netflix.
