The Girl on the Train focuses on three women (the collectively terrific Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson) whose lives are all interconnected. Rachel (Blunt) is an unemployed, emotionally-unstable alcoholic who constantly rides the train through the neighborhood in which her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) and current wife Anna (Ferguson) reside. During her daily commute on the train, Rachel becomes obsessed with Megan (Bennett) and Scott (Luke Evans), a young married couple that Rachel has come to blindly believe is the embodiment of true love. One fateful afternoon, a highly inebriated Rachel sees Megan on her balcony with another man and promptly gets off the train to confront her over her infidelity. Rachel awakens the next morning from her drunken haze covered in blood and scrapes with no recollection of what occurred after she got off of the train and soon hears a news report that Megan-who is revealed to have been employed as the nanny to Tom and Anna's baby- has gone missing. Perplexed and devastated, Rachel quickly becomes hellbent on trying to figure out if she had anything to do with Megan's disappearance.
I'm not going to lie, it's basically impossible to watch The Girl on the Train without comparing it to Gone Girl. While The Girl on the Train may not feature the satirical social commentary and level of unpredictability that made Gone Girl a masterpiece, the parallels between this and David Fincher's 2014 film are still very strong. Both films rely on a group of heavily flawed protagonists that serve as unreliable narrators, feature engaging yet occasionally convoluted intertwined narratives and have key plot points that frequently veer between wildly over-the-top and alarmingly realistic. There's no doubt in my mind that the people who disliked Gone Girl's bleakness and largely unlikable characters will have a similarly unpleasant time with this, but anyone that enjoyed Fincher's film or Gillian Flynn's novel should have no problem becoming absorbed by The Girl on the Train's deceit-driven central mystery.
The script from Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Men, Women & Children) is light on surprises and features a few too many overlong, soulless monologues, but still manages to be pretty impressive on the whole. The motivations and backstories of all three leading women are well-developed and the frequent transitions between different characters and timelines are handled in a very organic matter. Juggling a story with three protagonists that shifts between the past and present on a whim without ever becoming super convoluted is a lofty task that Wilson handled very well.
What ends up elevating The Girl on the Train from B to B+ range is the remarkable turn from Blunt as Rachel. Blunt displays every ounce of the emptiness, delusion, rage and self-doubt that comes with alcoholism while still making Rachel the most (and arguably only) emphatic character in the film. Underneath all of her rash decision-making and constant lying, Rachel is a good soul that has fallen into a pattern of self-destructive behavior after going through years of immense emotional pain and trauma. You seldom see alcoholism played with this level of authenticity on screen and as someone who has witnessed several family members battle with the disease for most of my life, I can't stress enough how important it is to see an actor accurately depict the effect it can have on a person's psychological and personal health. Blunt has been turning in consistently strong performances of late, but I feel like this could very well be her finest work to-date.
The Girl on the Train is the perfect appetizer to cleanse the pallet from this summer's wave of blockbusters before the onslaught of award contenders start hitting theaters within the next few weeks. It's not likely to have a place on many people's "Best of 2016" lists or achieve any sort of cult status, but The Girl on the Train is still a very well-constructed, engaging and finely-acted thriller that should satisfy most fans of the genre.
4/5 Stars
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