Review

The Girl on the Train

Scott (Luke Evans) and Megan (Haley Bennett) have a seemingly perfect relationship in Tate Taylor’s thriller The Girl on the Train, adapted from Paula Hawkins’ best-selling novel.
Scott (Luke Evans) and Megan (Haley Bennett) have a seemingly perfect relationship in Tate Taylor’s thriller The Girl on the Train, adapted from Paula Hawkins’ best-selling novel.

The Girl on the Train is less a whodunit than a whocareswhodunit.

Populated by a cast of characters who do all sorts of troubling self-destructive things, the movie makes viewers wonder why the killer didn't have the decency to off the rest of the mopey, joyless characters. The fiend could have done the audience a great favor by taking the rest of us out of their misery.

The Girl on the Train

72 Cast: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramirez, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, Darren Goldstein, Lisa Kudrow

Director: Tate Taylor

Rating: R, for violence, sexual content, language and nudity

Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes

At least screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (working from Paula Hawkins' novel) and Emily Blunt deliver a mildly intriguing if emotionally fragile and morally suspect protagonist.

Rachel Watson (Blunt) spends most of her day taking a long train ride to and from New York. It's obvious she's not headed to the Big Apple for work because most of her travel time is spent sketching and peering into the house of a couple named Megan (Haley Bennett, The Magnificent Seven) and Scott (Luke Evans) who seem like the perfect couple.

Rachel doesn't have much to base this conclusion on because she only sees the two for a few seconds as the train passes by the house. Perhaps she needs a little fantasy because her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) has dumped her for their Realtor, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Anna is the one who sold the house that she and Tom now live in while Rachel wanders around in an inebriated state.

Even Rachel's dream of the giddy Scott and Megan collapses when she spots the latter smooching a stranger on her balcony. Envisioning the collapse of her own marriage in the window of the train, Rachel staggers out of the passenger car to confront the wayward woman, but blacks out. She awakens to discover that she's battered and dirty and has no memory of how she got home. She also discovered that there's a citywide search for Megan, and if the woman has come to a bad end, Rachel is the most likely suspect even if she has no recollection of how she might have killed her.

Cressida Wilson and director Tate Taylor attempt to build up the story by revealing important clues through a long series of flashbacks. Some of these even change the point of view. The effect is disorienting but hardly suspenseful.

Having multiple unreliable narrators results in a story where nothing can be taken seriously. The Girl on the Train quickly loses viewer trust and never regains it.

Watching other people getting into yelling matches and having unpleasant sex is as emotionally draining as experiencing dread on one's own. Nothing in Taylor's previous output (The Help, Get on Up) indicates he understands the difference between thrilling and dreary. Danny Elfman's somber score only emphasizes that these folks have a complete inability to enjoy drinking or making love.

Because Blunt's Rachel is trying either to clear her name or at least understand the totality of a crime she might have committed, she's somewhat more empathetic than the rest of the community. But even liver-crushing alcoholism can't explain some of her actions. To learn more about Megan she starts seeing the missing woman's psychiatrist (Edgar Ramirez). Not only does it seem like a questionable move, but it's easy to wonder how she got in to see him so quickly or how she got her health insurance (if she has any) to pay for it.

It also doesn't help that an alert viewer can guess which one of these cranky folks is the homicidal one more quickly than the detective (Allison Janney) can. Some movies can take viewers away from their troubles outside the theater or help them understand the real world more easily. The Girl on the Train takes viewers on a journey less satisfying than gazing out a window for a couple hours.

MovieStyle on 10/07/2016

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