There was considerable hype surrounding The Girl on the Train when the film was first announced. The 2014 novel of the same name had been a major bestseller, and DreamWorks moved quickly to secure the rights and put a movie into production. The story centers on Rachel (Emily Blunt), a woman whose life has collapsed into alcoholism and routine. Every day she rides a train into New York City, drinking heavily and constructing an elaborate fantasy about a woman she regularly sees from the window. That woman, Megan (Haley Bennett), appears to Rachel as the picture of marital happiness and contentment. In reality, Megan’s life is a mess: she is damaged, restless, and carrying on an affair with her therapist behind her husband’s back.
One night Rachel, thoroughly drunk, confronts Megan near a bridge and then blacks out. The next morning she wakes up covered in blood. Megan has disappeared, and Rachel may have been the last person to see her alive.
The film leans into dark, uncomfortable material. Rachel’s alcoholism is not a side detail; it is the central through-line of her character. As the story unfolds, we learn more about the losses that pushed her into this state. Her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) left her after she was unable to conceive and started a new family with Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Rachel lost her job because of her drinking and never told her roommate, so her days now consist of riding the train, spying on strangers, and getting blackout drunk. It is not exactly uplifting material. The narrative jumps between multiple points of view, with each new perspective adding pieces to a classic “whodunit” puzzle.
Thematically the movie is interested in inner demons, unreliable memory, and the stories people tell themselves to survive. Those ideas are interesting on paper, but they create a significant problem on screen: there are almost no likable characters. You can pity several of them, yet pity is not the same as investment. Because so many of the figures operate in moral gray zones, and because the audience knows at least one of them is capable of murder, it becomes difficult to care deeply about anyone’s fate. Once the mystery starts to resolve itself in fairly predictable ways, the early goodwill the film has built begins to evaporate.
The best description of The Girl on the Train is a strong setup followed by disappointing execution. What begins as a moody, psychologically intriguing thriller gradually slides into soap-opera territory. Emily Blunt’s performance is the clear highlight and essentially carries the movie; she commits fully to Rachel’s fragility, self-loathing, and occasional flashes of determination. Most of the other characters receive less dimension or less screen time, so they never become equally compelling. The story is constructed well enough to keep viewers watching and guessing for a while, yet the final revelations feel more inevitable than shocking. Comparisons to Gone Girl are inevitable, and this film simply does not match that earlier movie’s narrative precision or tonal control.
In the end, The Girl on the Train offers an intermittently entertaining ride that arrives at a flat and unsatisfying destination. The atmosphere is effectively grim, Blunt is excellent, and the central premise has potential. But the lack of characters worth rooting for, the growing predictability of the mystery, and the slide into melodrama keep the film from becoming anything more than a middling thriller. It is watchable, occasionally gripping, and ultimately forgettable.
2/5
Society Reviews 
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