The Girl on the Train - Movie Review

With an award-worthy performance by Emily Blunt and a twist to rival Psycho, these elements cannot keep this mess of a film from de-railing its source material.

Based on the hit mystery novel by Paula Hawkins, this film makes the unfortunate choice of adapting it the exact same way the book was written; a first-person narrative from the perspective of three different people. The narration, the jumpy narrative and the terrible pacing are all evidence of filmmakers and screenwriters who did not know how to edit the novel for a film medium.

The cinematography and editing are very cliche and address all the tropes for a typical thriller; the phasing edits, the cutting frames, the rack of focus, the colloquially called "Hitchcock Shot"). The tropes are all addressed but they never really feel motivated and the overall framing for the blackouts is more fascinating than the actual "memory" moments where she recovers what she's forgotten. It's a well-made film based purely on its shot design, the composition is wonderful and the camera's movement is very smooth and thankfully low in seizure-inducing "shaky-cam" which most modern day thrillers use. There are some very good uses of these tropes, her first two flashbacks are evocative of the kind of feel I have in mind for my thriller treatment.

The acting is amazing; Emily Blunt is one of my all-time favourite actresses and she gives an incredible performance. She plays the alcoholic part a little too well, it's rather chilling. If this were an all-around stronger film she should have been a big awards contender. But the low critical and box-office rates hindered the film beyond all relief, both from an audience and awards point of view. Rebecca Ferguson, another one of my favourite actresses, gives a very enthralling performance. She doesn't have a ton to do, her character is more or less a plot device, but she does the best she can with what she's given. Luke Evans, another great actor, plays the abusive, possessive husband brilliantly, I'm glad to see his career is doing well as he's a very likeable actor with a lot of range. Lisa Kudrow has a fleeting cameo and she does a very good job, she is the nicest character in the entire film. She is relegated to being a bit of an expository character, basically helping to lay out the twist at the end of the film (which is genuinely brilliant), but she makes it work. The rest of the cast suffers from their bad writing and it is sometimes cringeworthy. Allison Janney as Detective Riley is playing a hard-bitten, grizzled cop and she plays every cop cliche ever done, Hayley Bennet is relegated to a sexy-lamp, she is an object that is passed around before being promptly murdered. She spends the entire film nude, having graphic and poorly filmed sex scenes and strutting around her balcony in skimpy outfits. Any character comes through in her writing, as she was written brilliantly in the original story, but she never has a narrator so most of her lines are her thought trains from the book. No actress could make those lines sound natural. And then there's Justin Theroux's Tom. Theroux, a David Lynch alumni and a fantastic actor is given nothing to work with. His character is so one note that you can place it the minute you see him. He plays the manipulative, conniving killer but his motives are unclear, his backstory is non-existant, his depth is that of a puddle. The only way Theroux manages to heighten his work is in just how cold and sinister Tom really is. And while the twist is genius, he never plays into that genius. He lets the twist speak for itself; it works with or without him and he's a weak, flat antagonist that adds nothing to the overall story except for a weak way to tie these stories together.