The Girl On The Train is Gone Girl-esque and brilliant [Review]
If you feel like your life has had an emotionally twisted, thriller-shaped hole since Gone Girl, look no further. The Girl On The Train, based on the novel of the same name by Paula Hawkins, will have you on an emotional and gripping roller coaster. that will leave you guessing right up until the last minute.
Rachel (Emily Blunt) lives in New York and takes the train to work every day. She stares out of the window at the familiar route, daydreaming about the lives of the people whose homes she passes. It doesn’t help that she used to live on the very street her train passes, and that her ex-husband (Justin Theroux) now lives in her old house with his new familywife (Rebecca Ferguson) and baby.
It’s apparent early on that Rachel has a drinking problem, and is bitter about her ex’s new life. She develops a fixation with one of the neighbouring houses, home to a seemingly perfect couple in Megan (Haley Bennett) and Scott (Luke Evans). Rachel obsesses about their idealistic life, one that is so similar to that she feels has been was taken from her.
When she thinks she sees Megan kiss another man from the train, she hits a breaking point, and sensing that this situation somehow mirrors her own injustices, she decides to act.
Things turn nasty when the neighbour – who looks suspiciously like her ex-husbands new wife, by the way – goes missing. Rachel was too drunk to remember what happened, and the audience is left on the edge of their seat to try and figure out the truth.
As the film develops, the audience is given an insight into the three narratives of the women in the story; learning about their pasts, their fears, and the reason for their behaviour.
Blunt’s performance is astounding; you’re torn between wanting to pity her, despise her, laugh at her, and shake some sense into her. The film is very much character based but, unlike other films of this style, there is still a solid plot.