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| Image Source: imdb.com |
The Girl on the Train is a mystery thriller based on the bestselling
novel by Paula Hawkins. Rachel is an alcoholic divorcee who rides a commuter
train to the job she has been fired from for over a year, when a woman goes
missing she becomes entangled in the investigation.
We follow Rachel on a continued downward spiral, she spends
her days drinking vodka like its water and gazing in to the windows of the
houses along the train track. She indulges in her obsession for a young couple
she thinks she knows as she watches every day. Emily Blunt is unsurprisingly
brilliant as Rachel, while reading Paula Hawkins novel I’ll admit I didn’t
picture anyone like Blunt but she won me over. The wonders of makeup have
transformed her in to someone that looks truly downtrodden and she plays Rachel
with the right balance of subtly and eccentricity to portray a character that
is deeply troubled but wishing to do the right thing. In fact I was happy with all of the casting choices;
I particularly liked Luke Evan’s as the unsettling Scott, the husband of the
missing Megan.
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| Image Source: imdb.com |
What made the book stand out was how it developed in to a
layered story of voyeurism, alcoholism and desperation. For me, this is where
the film adaptation fell flat as it failed to reach the depths of its source
material. I really struggle with films that use narration as the main form of
storytelling. There was so much to pack in to the film to build tension and
emotion and the main vehicle of this seemed to be stirring monologues. This created
some really problematic pacing; the story seems to chug along with character
development before rushing to a conclusion with little build up.
While the novel is set in London the film has been moved to
New York in an attempt to make Blunt’s British Rachel even more of an outsider.
Call me picky but I really think that the setting should have remained the
same. Seeing the drama of your cavorting neighbours play out through their
windows seems far less likely on a property of two thousand square feet. There’s
something off putting by the glamour that surrounds the lives of many of our
New York set characters while the book described the behind-the-scenes chaos of
their home lives.
The Girl on the Train fails to stand against its genre
predecessors but will hold up at the box office thanks to Emily Blunt’s
performance and is a faithful adaptation that sticks closely to its source.
Although this could be its downfall as the film hears like an audio book with
questionable pacing.
