The Girl on the Train
by Erin Cressida Wilson (screenplay) & Paula Hawkins (based on the novel by)
DreamWorks
The Girl on the Train is the movie version of the thriller that became part of the national zeitgeist for over a year. The story follows three women: Rachel, Anna and Megan. Rachel is an alcoholic, still struggling after her divorce. Every day she takes the train into Manhattan and passes her old neighborhood where her ex, Tom, is living with his new wife, Anna.
She also passes a house where Megan lives. Rachel fantasizes about Megan and her husband Scott, imagining the perfect life they must have–the life she longed for. Then one day Megan goes missing and Rachel becomes entwined in the case.
RHG and I have things to say, and we’re spoiling the shit out of the book and the movie so beware!
Elyse: So I have to say, while I liked the movie, after reading the book it was pretty anticlimactic.
RHG: I’m not…sure? I think I liked it, but I don’t think I’ll ever take another two hours out of my life to see it again?
So I have not read the book, and Elyse has – I made that choices deliberately to compare our reactions. We did a science for you bitches.
Elyse: We are here for you.
Obviously the downside to reading the book first is that you know how the movie ends (and vice versa). So I guess my first question is: were you surprised by the end?
RHG: Since I knew that this was in the vein of Gone Girl, I knew there was a mind screw involved.
I don’t know, I think I was just whelmed.
Elyse: If you like psychological thrillers, then odds are you’ll like this movie. If you like twisty-turny, WTFery, then you’ll like this. If depictions of gaslighting and domestic violence upset you, do not see it.
RHG: Correct. I liked how the story was split between the three protagonist women- Rachel, Anna and (uhh…..).
And I liked how we discovered more about each of them as the story switched from point of view to point of view.
I also liked all of the shots of trains and traveling and the view from the windows. I love trains and traveling on them so I enjoyed all the scenery very much.
Elyse: There are some themes to the book/ movie that I disliked. I didn’t like that Rachel’s infertility and Megan’s intention to not have kids led them both to spiral out of control. I’m so tired of the theme that childlessness is unnatural or the worst thing that can happen to a woman.
RHG: I mean, one of the points is we just don’t know how far Rachel spiraled out of control as a result of the infertility and how much was due to Tom. But your point is taken.
What did you think of the dudes?
Elyse: I think both Justin Theroux and Luke Evans make good creepy bastards.
I think the thing that left me whelmed was that I thought I was getting a story where Rachel was the fucked up drunk who left a trail of destruction behind her, where her drinking caused all of these problems, and then it turned out that no, no, dudes are just the worst. And I was kind of disappointed by that. I am aware that dudes are the worst. I just thought I was getting a specific kind of ice cream, but it turns out that core that Ben and Jerry’s put in there was not what I expected.
I also thought that they cast and made up Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson to follow in the mold of Rosamund Pike and Gone Girl and that was a little on the nose there, movie. You don’t need to lay on the parallels quite so thick.
Elyse: I think the movie does a good job of portraying how insidious gaslighting is.
In the book Rachel is even more fucked up.
Her whole life is an elaborate lie. I really thought that needed to be in the movie.
RHG: I thought… it was?
Nothing about her life is good (except her super cute coats).
I was super impressed with Emily Blunt (who has no Oscar nominations! THAT IS A CRIME) in her drunk acting (and props to the makeup team for getting the red nose just right). Hayley Bennett is having a hell of a fall between this and The Magnificent Seven, and Rebecca Ferguson is just a chameleon (seriously, I NEVER recognize her!). Props to all three ladies.
Elyse: The biggest difference between the book (yeah I’m going to be that person sorry) and the movie was that the movie makes it clear:
It’s been awhile since I read the book but I remember having the impression that the murder was premeditated and maybe not even the first woman he killed. In the book Tom was a lot scarier, I thought, and the women killing him felt more like, “we can’t let this happen ever again” justification than self defense.
Regardless of the differences, it was still well-done. Not perfect but well-done. I’d have liked it better if I didn’t already know the ending, but I felt it was worth the price of a ticket.
What about you? Have you seen the movie, read the book, or both? What did you think?
The Girl on the Train is in theaters now and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.
Haven’t seen or read it – psych thrillers are not my bag. However, yes, Emily Blunt is fantastic in everything. WHERE is her Oscar? (I loved her as Prudie in The Jane Austen Book Club. Heck, I just love JABC.)
Also, this: “There are some themes to the book/ movie that I disliked. I didn’t like that Rachel’s infertility and Megan’s intention to not have kids led them both to spiral out of control. I’m so tired of the theme that childlessness is unnatural or the worst thing that can happen to a woman.”
PREACH, ELYSE! When a woman (character or irl) chooses not to have kids, SHE IS MAKING THE CHOICE SHE WANTS. She is not a sad sack of female reproductive frustration and regret because “OF COURSE women are only complete when they marry and have kids.”
Gah. What year is it again?
The book was a DNF for me because of the whole “wah I have no childres I will never be complete as a real woman!” bit and because I got about half way through and went yeah, you’re not as smart as Gillian Flynn and I think I’m not the only one in this couple of author-reader that knows that. But I love Emily Blunt. Cannot wait to see her in the new Mary Poppins, loved her in JABC, my daughter and I routinely make jokes about “One good flu away from my goal weight” anytime we get the sniffles. But I just don’t know if I can plunk down hard earned cash to see this. I think I’ll save my popcorn budget for Rogue One and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 so I can have heroines to root for.
I saw the movie two weeks ago and I haven’t reviewed it because it felt extremely mediocre. [more spoilers follow] There were some themes running through it — pregnancy, people being abusive (even the police officer played by Allison Janney) — but they never felt like they added up to anything. I wasn’t impressed by the formula “we’ll make it look like Character A is guilty; no, now we’ll make it look like Character B is guilty; no, on to Character C…” And I thought the ending was too pat — she’s been obsessed with her ex-husband and a (literally) blackout drunk, but she was manipulated and none of it was her fault — to the extent one character actually says something like “She was right. She was right about everything.” I’d give it a C: The acting was fine, but I felt like I forgot about it as soon as it ended.
I also thought the movie was mediocre. Rebecca Ferguson’s wig took me out of the action in every one of her scenes. But I do have a partial quibble about the reductiveness of Rachel and Megan’s crisis stemming from motherhood. SPOILER
I agree that it’s annoying that the thought of infertility sent Rachel into spiral, but I think it’s also clear that it’s Tom’s gaslighting and the subsequent loss of her marriage and stability that contributed to her degringolade. However, I think Megan’s trauma is a hell of a lot more than just “I lost a child, I don’t want anymore, I’m incomplete.” Losing a child is traumatic and tragic no matter what, and it’s clear that Megan was suffering previous to having a child (See “We were the saddest people we knew”), so being, albeit inadvertently, responsible for the child’s death seems to me as something that would ruin her whole life.
I haven’t seen the movie but I thought the book was just… mediocre, honestly. I was super excited to read it too, given all the praise it was getting, but it was super predictable and at times boring. The ending was probably the only surprise.
This review makes me think I’ll be better off waiting for it to show up on Netflix.
I actually wanted to see this. But I will probably wait for video. It takes a lot for me to go see a movie in a theatre with hacking coughing, seat kickers, cell phone abusers and inevitably sitting next to someone with weak bladder/need a smoke during the movie aisle movers. It’s not like you can pause the movie and say, “Sit your ass down, shut the fuck up, cover your mouth when you cough, or put the cell phone away….PLEASE.
Doesn’t happen all the time but I get distracted if the movie doesn’t hold my complete attention. My husband on the other hand, wouldn’t be phased by a stampede as long as the movie was still playing and he could hear most of it. lol
fazed not phased…sorry.
Gaslighting? Should I somehow KNOW what you mean by that? I’m pretty sure you are not referring to turning on antique light fixtures.
@Patsy: I had to look up degringolade. New word! I’ll probably never have the opportunity to use it as effortlessly and effectively as you did, but it’s great to be able to add it to the collection. 🙂
My brother read the book and loved it, so it’s on my TBR pile even tho it’s not really my cuppa. (And I made him tell me all the spoilers–I’m tat annoying person who reads the end of the book first.) I don’t need to have everything be sunshine and roses, but I do want to have at least one sympathetic/likable character to invest in.
I also didn’t realize that the story had been Americanized. Kinda annoying. I may watch the movie, but it will probably be on video.
@Kswan: I’m not sure if you’re joking or not, so my apologies in advance. Check out the old movie Gaslight where Charles Boyer tries to make Ingrid Bergman think she’s crazy by messing with the gaslights in their house. I don’t know if the term was in use before this, but the movie certainly popularized it.
This kind of story is not my bag. It just gives off a whiff of “bad things happening to women for no real reason, just because it’s easy to string those story components together.”
I love Emily Blunt though. She was so good in “Devil Wears Prada” and “The Adjustment Bureau.” Have missed a couple of her movies that were more my line.
Justin Theroux: isn’t he the one who always plays the Irish bad guy?
I thought Emily Blunt was nominated for her sensational portrayal of the title character in The Young Victoria? Seriously one of the best, imho.
This, I’m not going to watch because I grew up in a gaslighting situation and that ain’t my form of entertainment. I do appreciate the warning.
I’m in the “wait for it on Netflix” camp. I was completely unimpressed with the book. First of all, when a book is written from three different narrators’ points of view, there has to be something (other than different fonts) to differentiate the characters’ voices. Then you have the way alcoholism is treated as a convenient plot device and not a serious condition. The woman goes from black-out drunk to mildly tipsy to stone-cold sober at the whim of the plot. And finally, it takes far more skill than Hawkins has to maintain suspense when only three plausible suspects have been introduced by three-quartets of the way through the book. You can make a random guess as to who the culprit is and have a 33-1/3 percent of being right. So yeah, waiting on Netflix.
This was SUCH an airplane/Netflix movie. Sheer mediocrity and random bits (why set it in NY but still have Rachel be British? Why cast Emily Blunt–which even made up to look a mess–whose similarities to Rachel (as described by the book) are close to nil?)
I gave the book a v. low rating on GR (was close to DNF’ing it, but didn’t because I wanted to make sure that my guess was right. It was.) So, I approached the movie with low expectations. Thankfully, my date paid for our tickets.
To think that this movie or book is anywhere near Gone Girl’s calibre is laughable.
@ Susan: I first came across “degringolade” in an old obituary of Yves Saint Laurent in the Economist about 10 years ago. I was clerking for a judge at the time and was sure I could use it in a written opinion so I wrote the definition on a post-it and had it on my computer screen for more than a year before I was able to use it. Now, it pops up more naturally in writing and conversation for me, but I still get a kick out of using it. I hope you will too!