For the past four weeks, a movie with actors and actresses I really enjoy has been released and I end up finding them to just be okay. This week The Girl on the Train is released and just like Snowden, The Magnificent Seven, and Deepwater Horizon, it is just an average movie.
The Girl on the Train is based on a book with the same name and stars Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux and a few other people that aren't really worth mentioning. Two years ago Rachel (Emily Blunt) got a divorce from her husband Tom (Justin Theroux) because he was cheating on her with a women named Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Rachel now rides a train each day to the city and the train just happens to go by Tom and Anna's house. While riding the train Rachel lets her mind run wild and makes up stories about all the people in the houses the train goes by. Two houses down from Tom and Anna lives Scott and Megan Hipwell. In Rachel's mind Scott and Megan have the perfect relationship and show what love is all about. One day this perfect relationship is ruined for Rachel when she witnesses something and Megan ends up going missing. Rachel decides she must put the puzzle pieces together and figure out what happened to Megan, but along the way she starts to wonder if she had something to do with Megan's disappearance.
Right away, the best thing about The Girl on the Train movie is Emily Blunt. She gives a pretty solid performance as Rachel. You really feel how devastating the divorce was for her and how vulnerable it has made her. Emily does a great job showing not only the physical affects of the divorce but also the mental ones. The look on her face throughout the movie lets you know something isn't right with her mentally. One problem I did have with her character though was that she wasn't that likable so many times throughout the movie, I didn't really care what was going to happen to her. I don't blame Emily for that though, that was a story decision and I can see how it may have been necessary for her character arc but left me feeling cold for most of the movie.
For being a psychological thriller, this movie is extremely slow. It takes a while for Megan Hipwell to actually disappear and once she does, it feels like it takes forever for the actual process for it being resolved to take place. Early on in the movie you spend a lot of time just getting to know Rachel, Megan and Anna. There is a lot of jumping back in time and learning what happened in the months/years prior to the present day events. Many of these flashbacks don't provide that much useful information and make you only dislike the characters even more. Also they try to make it seem like Rachel had something to do with Megan's disappearance, but not once do you feel like Rachel is actually in any danger of being caught by the police and being accused of a crime. The main cop in the movie, played by Allison Janney, speaks to Rachel multiple times and acts like she knows Rachel did it but never brings her in and never acts like she is close to bringing her in.
The Girl on the Train has been compared a lot to the movie/book Gone Girl and at times while watching the movie, it was hard to not think about Gone Girl. Now I haven't seen Gone Girl since it was in theaters in 2014 so I don't remember the little details about it. Some of the basics are easy to compare with both dealing with a girl that has gone missing and couples dealing with infidelity, but as a movie, Gone Girl was way more engaging. Near the end of The Girl on the Train you can tell they were trying to have their Gone Girl moment with a scenes that were extremely violent, but they weren't all that shocking like the one in Gone Girl.
There were a few scenes in the movie involving a computer that drove me nuts. I know these scenes are extremely minor and most people won't notice, but for me they instantly took me out of the movie. In these scenes, a character is trying to log on to someones computer. The problem is the computer is locked and they need to enter a password. Normally on a computer when you enter a password, you do not see the actual characters of the password, but in this movie, they show the word the person actually guessed. I know, I know, this is an extremely minor gripe, but I couldn't stand it.
The Girl on the Train was an okay movie. Emily Blunt gives a solid performance and there were some twists and turns in the story that kept me guessing. The problem is that I didn't really care about the characters so I wasn't too interested in some of the twists and turns. At times the movie got extremely slow and that took a lot of the thrills and suspense out of it for me. I haven't read the book so I can't say go see the movie if you loved the book, but I can say that it probably is only worth watching at home and not on the big screen.
3 out of 5 Stars
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