The Girl on the Train is Rachel (Emily Blunt), an alcoholic divorcee who takes it upon herself to help investigate a missing persons’ case. The person that’s gone missing is Megan (Hayley Bennett), the nanny of her ex-husband’s new family. Rachel is trying to figure this mystery out because she often saw Megan from the train she rides daily into the city. She became obsessed with imagining the life that Megan had with her husband Scott (Luke Evans). And Rachel happened to be in the area on the night that Megan went missing, remembering only bits and pieces of what actually happened.
There’s a lot more going on here, but it would best not to discuss them. The film is a mystery, after all, and one should likely go in it with as little information as possible. Although it must be said that as a mystery, this story isn’t done particularly well. The thrills of a mystery tend to come from assembling the clues, from seeing how seemingly disparate elements might fit together to form a single picture. This film is really all just about one character trying to remember something. The film enhances the story with plenty of interesting detail, but the main plot itself is kind of a dead end.
It isn’t even really all that hard to figure out. The thing is, the film isn’t very good at making red herrings look like real possibilities. The list of suspects is very small, and through a simple process of elimination, a reasonable viewer should be able to suss out what actually happened. Of course, the mystery is only part of the point. There’s another game that the film is playing, the main character’s arc built on her relationship with her own memories. That’s a more intriguing, more rewarding track, but it takes a while for the film to really get there.
And so for most of the film, we’re spent following this one woman as she does things that she really shouldn’t be doing. When the police confront her with all the bad things that she’s done, one can’t help but just agree that she is indeed in the wrong. It is easy enough to have sympathy for the character. The film does convey that there is something deeper inside this character that is driving her to her bad behavior. And yet, because the film is a mystery, because so much information has to be saved for the final moments, too much of this film becomes about following this one character as she encounters obvious red herrings through her ill-advised behavior.
That the film is watchable at all is much to the credit of Emily Blunt. The actress really holds this film together, her portrayal of Rachel keeping the character grounded even as her behavior continues to fly off the rails. It becomes easy to understand her obsessions, the actresses conveying a brokenness that the script delays for a little too long. Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson are pretty good as well, though the script fails these characters even more.
The Girl on the Train is kind of trashy fun in a way. The story is outrageous and pulpy enough to grab one’s attention, certainly, and the subtext of all this is kind of interesting. But it isn’t really smart enough to make it work as a feature film. It feels slow and dour, the central mystery lacking the forward momentum that makes this kind of story work on screen. Emily Blunt is terrific, but the actress’ efforts don’t quite salvage the film.
My Rating:
