The Girl on the Train (2016) | Film Review

We’ve all been there.

Think back to the harshest split in your romantic life and ponder your reaction to that brutal heartbreak. The anger, the betrayal, the pain. Knowing someone left you in pieces, only to then continue on to seemingly glorious life in the wake of your ashes. That’s where Rachel (Emily Blunt) wallows in her drunken self-pity every single day as she catches the train for work to New York and back, passing the home of her ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), and his new family in The Girl on the Train. This is not a coincidence of innocence, this is a broken woman with an obsession.

Rachel’s fixation drifts on these daily commutes, as she casts an angelic light on Megan (Haley Bennett), the beautiful neighbor two doors down with a seemingly perfect marriage to Scott (Luke Evans). This is the life she envisioned, and finds herself drawn to the beauty she fantasizes from these two each time her rail car rolls by. After Rachel believes to witness Megan straying from Scott, her inebriated efforts to confront her lead to a complete blackout. Waking up the next morning covered in blood and bruises, with a missing Megan in the news, Rachel is forced to face her demons and piece together the true course of events that night.

As fans of Paula Hawkins’ novel already know, The Girl on the Train owes a sizeable debt to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. As with that classic film, my personal favorite, voyeurism is a natural inclination for all of us. We – as a species – love to observe our neighbors and friends while creatively incorporating our own speculations on the sordid details occurring behind the proverbial curtain. When someone wrongs us, that compulsion often explodes into self-demonizing bouts of this itch – rifling through every Facebook status, analyzing every picture and its secret meaning, associating hidden context. It’s this box of loathing that Rachel drinks her life away in, and for the first time in a very long while, she needs it to stop.

While Blunt’s Rachel is the linchpin, the story follows a very non-linear timeline and provides insight into both Megan and Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), Tom’s new wife and mother to his child. As the mystery unfolds, we learn how imperfect Megan’s marriage truly is to her mildly abusive husband, as well as her own inner demons she unfurls upon her psychiatrist, Dr. Abdic (Edgar Ramirez). It also affords us the flipside of Rachel’s fractured psyche, as we see Anna’s version of each drunken escapade. It’s an intriguing look past the tropes of the genre, and into the perspectives of these females as fully realized characters. Damaged, yet relatable.

With Megan’s disappearance looming on her conscience and Detective Riley (Allison Janney) beginning to suspect her, Rachel sets off on an erratic search for the facts, unfortunately the truth is hard to come by when your tendencies have negated your own memories. Emily Blunt astounds in easily the most unglamorous role of her career, portraying a woman who outwardly appears near-psychotic. Rachel is not a nice person, and she’s certainly off-kilter, yet Blunt’s earnest attempt to rectify her mistakes endear her to us in a performance that will hopefully elevate her career to the next level.

Bennett and Ferguson both shine, though in respectively less developed roles, Ferguson’s Anna in particular is almost a moot point in the final act. This last stretch – the revelation of everything the film has been building to – feels almost rushed, and with a steadier hand behind the screenplay, this could have been this year’s Gone Girl. Instead, the irrational interactions from many of the key players underwhelm what should have been a breath-taking conclusion.

The Girl on the Train hits the tracks running, promising a story of envy and obsession wrapped in a web of lies. While it might not have pulled into the station as smooth as it could have, Blunt’s performance, the connection between three leading ladies and a journey through our own voyeuristic predilections is more than enough to justify the price of a ticket.