FILM REVIEWS

The Girl on the Train

Cert: 15A. Now showing.

Bookshelves are groaning under the weight of dark thrillers with “girl” in the title. Arguably, Stieg Larsson got the ball rolling with his now-ubiquitous Scandi-noir trilogy before Gillian Flynn conquered all with 2012’s Gone Girl. When Paula Hawkins put out The Girl on the Train last year, it was a smash on both sides of the pond. Like Larsson and Flynn, Hollywood came a-knocking.

The story was told via the first-person narratives of three women, a trick that director Tate Taylor and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson dabble with here but mostly eschew in favour of using that of rail-pass-user Rachel. Emily Blunt throbs as the fragile 32-year-old alcoholic in a bad way following the collapse of her marriage to Tom (Justin Theroux, real-life husband of Jennifer Aniston). She peers out from the New York commuter train each day to and from the city at her former home, now the domain of Tom, new partner Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) and their baby. After a day on the vodka, she’s also prone to stalking them by phone or foot.

But Rachel is also obsessed with Tom’s beautiful neighbours, Megan and Scott (Haley Bennett and Luke Evans). She invents a picture of loved-up newlywed bliss that is one day distorted when she sees Megan with another man. Rachel awakes from a blackout the next day to find herself covered in blood before learning that Megan has gone missing. Alison Janney’s no-nonsense police detective turns up at Rachel’s apartment door after Anna reported seeing her in the neighbourhood. Still with us?

If you are unfamiliar with the source material, Taylor’s film will certainly keep you guessing, which it should. Smart cinematography and Danny Elfman’s score brew heady atmospherics but the finale unseats this tension as it shuffles to a halt. More sting in the tail would have been nice.