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At some point—whether as a kid on the way to school or as an adult on the way to work—we’ve found ourselves traveling the same path through the same streets day after day. After a while, the people along that regular route may have taken on personalities in our imagination. But in the twisted thriller The Girl on the Train, one woman takes her imagining a step further.
The Girl on the Train stars Emily Blunt as Rachel, a lonely divorcee who’s obsessed with the women she sees on her daily train ride into the city—Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), who’s now married to Rachel’s ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), and Anna’s neighbor, Megan (Haley Bennett), who lives a seemingly perfect life. But when Rachel sees Megan with another man, she’s enraged by the woman’s betrayal. She wakes the next day, bloody and hung over, unsure of what happened. And when she hears that Megan has gone missing, she becomes immersed in the case.
Based on the bestselling novel by Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train has been called this year’s Gone Girl—another complex thriller about secrets, lies, and troubled relationships, in which nothing is quite as it seems. What starts out as a story about three interconnected women—the desperate divorcee, the perfect suburban mom, and the dissatisfied wife—turns into something bigger and more complex as the women’s stories unfold. And although two of the three characters sometimes fall a bit flat, each one brings something to the story: Rachel’s heartbreak, Megan’s secrets, and Anna’s growing suspicions.
Of course, at the heart of it all is Blunt’s Rachel, a troubled character who’s sometimes difficult to like. She’s simply a mess—her life a toxic mix of alcohol, desperation, and obsession with the life she lost. Without the right person in the role, she could be unlikable or just plain pathetic. But, even in the character’s darkest moments, Blunt’s performance is so good—her outbursts so frenzied—that you’ll be captivated by her. And as more of her story comes out, you’ll begin to understand some of the things behind her self-destructive behavior.
The story that plays out, then, is tense and mysterious—a suspenseful puzzle that will have audiences playing along, caught up in the case with Rachel, trying to figure out what happened on that hazy night.
If you like your movies dark and complex and often disturbing, too, you’ll enjoy the mountain of mysteries in The Girl on the Train. It may not be a flawless thriller, but it’s definitely an entertaining one.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
