The Girl on the Train

Last year readers eagerly awaited the adaptation of The Girl on the Train starring Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson following the popular book. Being preoccupied with too many other books, I decided to give this one a miss but having heard comparisons to Gone Girl and also spending a lot of time commuting on trains, I decided this mystery drama could be worth a shot.

Before going in, I knew very little about what to expect and now having seen this, it is a bit of a tricky one to explain. In as short as I can make this, an emotionally unstable divorcee (Emily Blunt) uses the train to spy on a couple and a nearby house where her ex-husband lives before getting involved with a missing persons case.

There's an overused criticism that works on paper doesn't always translate well to the screen but I think that best sums up The Girl on the Train. The narrative seems to divide between the three female characters, which I imagined worked well on paper, but with the focus on Blunt resulted in any other scene feeling underdeveloped. Whereas No Country For Old Men brilliantly handled telling the stories of three different characters, The Girl on the Train can't escape feeling choppy and confusing.

Despite the muddled storytelling, we do get one of Emily Blunt's best performances in the lead role and as we watch her character develop, the film does offer its best moments and shows rare signs of promise. The supporting cast that also includes Luke Evans, Edgar Ramirez and Justin Theroux are all decent but like Bennett and Ferguson, feel underdeveloped to the point the story becomes difficult to care about.

Frustratingly there probably is a very good film / TV series under all of this that just needed the right direction. As it stands, The Girl on the Train is a disappointing experience that fails to deliver much excitement or intrigue for newcomers or fans of the book.