GIRL’S GONE…WILD
The Girl on the Train
Review by Nick Hemming
(Gone Girl spoilers ahead)
Last night I saw Gone Girl 2: The Girl on the Train. Although I’m being facetious about the title, Tate Taylor’s (The Help, Get on Up) latest film does share more than a few similarities with 2014’s Gone Girl, AKA What-The-F**k-Did-I-Just-Watch: The Movie (more on this later). I’ve never read Paula Hawkins’ novel of the same name, so I went into The Girl on the Train with essentially no idea what to expect. While I didn’t find the twists “mind-blowing” (I actually predicted the “Big Twist” about halfway through), the film is undoubtedly effective in the way it erratically dances from perspective to perspective, subtly chipping away at the principal mystery in question while still managing to hold its cards relatively close to the chest.
The story follows Rachel (Emily Blunt), our proverbial “girl on the train,” an alcoholic woman still reeling from a messy divorce. Rachel spends her days, you guessed it, riding a train into New York City and back. The train passes by her old house, where her now ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), lives with his new wife, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), and their baby. However, the real reason Rachel rides the train is to [creepily] watch Tom and Anna’s neighbors, their nanny Megan (Haley Bennett) and her husband, Scott (Luke Evans). Rachel fantasizes about Megan’s life, or at least her perception of Megan’s life, getting hammered and imagining how happy she must be. Then, one day, Rachel sees Megan on her front porch with another man, spiraling her into a drunken rage. She gets off the train, and the next thing we know, Rachel is waking up in her bed with blood all over her. What’s worse: Megan is missing. The rest of the story unfolds as Rachel desperately tries to piece together what happened on the night in question.
Like I previously mentioned, The Girl on the Train feels like a spinoff of Gone Girl. For starters, both are based on incredibly popular novels, both are centered around the mystery of a missing spouse, and both deploy so many twists and turns that it’s truly impossible to settle on a single suspect for too long. Like Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train plays with the idea that the “perfect marriage” is nothing more than an elusive façade; regardless of how happy a couple may seem, there is always an unseen tension being repressed within the relationship. It’s truly a rather gloomy theme, and one that is continuously pounded into your brain throughout the films’ durations. Both movies honestly feel like more expensive Lifetime movies with better acting, which isn’t necessarily an insult, but I wouldn’t consider it a compliment, either.
Where The Girl on the Train is able to separate itself is in its grounded realism. In Gone Girl, characters take actions that are just plain illogical and entirely impossible for any [sane] person to relate to. “My husband cheated on me so I’ll fake my death, frame him for it, hope that he gets the death penalty, and then kill myself” is NOT the moral, or even the faintest seeds of an idea, that we want to be instilling in the minds of young girls (Seriously, Gone Girl is hands-down the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, just knowing that somewhere, some young, unstable girl will see this movie and say, “Ya know, that’s not a half-bad idea…”). In The Girl on the Train, all actions and personalities are sensibly justified by relatable and sympathetic reasons. It’s hard to provide many examples without spoiling plot details, so I will just give one that is not critical: Rachel turned to alcoholism after doctors were unable to help her become fertile. Infertility is an incredibly tough thing to deal with for thousands of people, and even if it’s not an issue you have to deal with, you still feel sorry for those that do. Thus, it’s totally conceivable that this could cause someone to turn to the bottle.
About halfway through the movie, I came to the following realization: “This movie is a real downer.” Seriously, if you were looking for a fun, smiley, uplifting experience, you’re in the wrong theater. This movie is flat out depressing, and although it’s one of the few criticisms I have of it, it’s a big one. It’s like the entire thing plays out as a continuous series of sad things happening to sad people, one after the other, until it finally ends and, though everyone may not be necessarily so sad anymore, they definitely aren’t happy. There isn’t a single character that is a glass-half-full kind of person, and it honestly forces the audience to share the film’s gloom. I suppose you could argue that it is metaphorical of how divorce feels, but that’d be reaching a bit too far in my opinion.
Ultimately, The Girl on the Train is the kind of movie that when someone asks you how it was, you respond with a shoulder-shrugged, “It was good,” where every syllable is an octave higher in pitch, indicating that you aren’t too confident with your own opinion. I mean, the cast was fine. The twists were fine. The drama was fine—the whole thing was just fine. It was like a better version of Gone Girl in which the writers said, “OK, let’s make this one NOT batshit crazy. No wine bottles up the cooter this time, guys!” The best thing I can say about it is that it will be the kind of movie your girlfriend loves. It has an aura about it that is both sexy and endearing for the female demographic, and the fellas get to see Haley Bennett’s bare butt! So…all in all, there are worse movies for date night!
Directed by: Tate Taylor
Release Date: October 7, 2016
Run Time: 112 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: R
Distributor: Universal Pictures
