'The Girl on the Train' Derailed

Based on Paula Hawkins’s 2015 best-selling novel and directed by Tate Taylor (“The Help,” “Get on Up”), “The Girl on the Train” is formulaic, lab-bred, mainstream thriller material. Emily Blunt plays Rachel Watson, the titular Girl who spends mornings not-so-surreptitiously sipping clear alcohol out of a water bottle, obsessing over her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux), and gazing longingly through the window of her train at a couple whom she deems “the embodiment of true love.” When Rachel learns that the woman in the couple has gone missing, she finds herself playing amateur Sherlock for a murder mystery buried in the recesses of her drunkenly faulty memory. While a few actors churn out excellent performances, a lethal combination of over-the-top characters and an underwritten script derails “Train” from the start.

Despite Emily Blunt’s best efforts, “The Girl on the Train” fails to deliver a new version of the same melodrama we’ve seen time and time again. Sure, nobody expected the film to reinvent the wheel, but at the very least it’s supposed to make some conscious effort to subvert its genre’s clichés in a meaningful way. Instead, the crux of the story hinges on tried-and-true thriller tropes: abusive husbands, crazy childless women, alcoholism, homicide. Ultimately, what could have been a fascinating subversion of the thriller genre becomes the unsurprising story of a trio of women who are victims of their own narratives.

Stuffed to the brim with B-list celebrities, “Train” misses the mark for great acting. As Megan, the doomed half of the mysterious couple, Haley Bennett sheds the theatrical tears of an actress who knows she looks pretty when she cries. Rebecca Ferguson’s Anna is one-dimensionally annoying. Justin Theroux’s Tom is predictable in a way that makes us wonder why Rachel and Anna are even fighting over him. And Lisa Kudrow’s Martha is the new character materialized in the transition from book to film—unnecessarily, needless to say.

Other than Laura Prepon as the best-friend comic relief and Allison Janney as the probing, no-nonsense Detective Riley, the film’s main saving grace is a delightfully unhinged Emily Blunt. Gazing into the camera through heavy-lidded, eyeliner-smudged eyes, Blunt delivers lackluster lines with admirable conviction: “She loved you in ways that people only dream of being loved”; “The booze just broke us”; “I’m afraid of myself!” She does the best she can with Erin Cressida Wilson’s cringe-worthy screenplay, but it’s disappointing to watch an actress with demonstrated talent not being used to her full capacity.

The clear highlights of “Train” are the unintentional moments when viewers can see the holes in its artifice: a melodrama so synthetic it becomes comical. Scenes that incite scattered laughter include (but are not limited to) a bizarrely eroticized therapy session featuring screaming in Spanish and seductive finger-sucking; a panicked Blunt ditching a baby swaddled in blankets on the grass; an unsolicited zoom on Luke Evans’ pelvis; and an over-the-top, grisly tussle involving a corkscrew. Hilarious, yes, but in a movie that bills itself as a thriller, the scenes are utterly out of place.

Maybe, though, Taylor’s film owes its undoing to its written predecessor. After all, an adaptation can only be as good as its foundation, and Hawkins’s 2015 bestseller was as predictably trite as they come. The saddest part is that the film has all the components and potential to be something special—a director with proven talent, a versatile leading lady, a highly-buzzed release—but falls prey to its own formulaic narrative. With “The Girl on the Train,” audiences are allowed a glimpse through a window at something that could have been great. But when we crane our necks to get a better look, we’ve already hurtled past.