After the success of Gone Girl movie studios all started looking for next thrilling novel to turn in to the new sexy slow burn thriller/blockbuster. The problem is of course that if the movie lacks the ‘burn’ then they are just slow. The Girl on the Train just lacked the intensity that a good thriller needs to be successful, so it ended up being forgettable.
The Girl on the Train follows Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) an alcoholic struggling to overcome the loss of her marriage. She rides around on the train all day wondering what the people in the houses she passes are up to. She even makes one couple in particular out to be perfect in her dreams, so when she sees the wife (Haley Bennett) cheat on her husband (Luke Evans) she gets angry and black out drunk. In her drunken stupor she may have done something horrible, but she cannot remember.
The problem with all of this is that we are never sure why we should care. Yes you do feel sorry for Blunt’s character, but not enough, and the rest of the characters aren’t worth rooting for either. The Girl on the Train is never as sexy, tense, or as clever as it thinks it is. It is really just a lot of mad terrible people talking in to the camera slowly. Luckily for us, all those people are really talented, so the movie is not a complete loss.
Emily Blunt gives an amazing performance and elevates this film. She has proven time and time again that she is a fabulous talent, but props have to be given to the rest of the cast as well. They pull off the enormous amount dialog with aplomb. It is a shame their efforts were wasted on this dull flick.
Without The Girl on a Train’s great cast it would have been a terrible movie. As it stands now it is just okay. Something to watch on a rainy day on Netflix. The Thanksgiving movie season is almost upon us, and there are some exciting movies on the horizon, so you should save your full price movie ticket money for something else.