Tate Taylor's Directing Derails "The Girl on the Train"
“The Girl on the Train” is based on the New York Times bestseller of the same name. The film focuses on a narrative concerning three women: Rachel, Megan, and Anna.
Rachel was married to Tom, but they divorced because Tom cheated on Rachel with Anna. Tom married Anna and now they have a child named Evie. Megan babysits Evie for Tom and Anna. Megan lives two doors down from Tom and Anna with her husband Scott.
Rachel, now an alcoholic who harrasses her ex-husband’s family, watches Scott and Megan from the train every morning and evening, not knowing who they are. She imagines them as a perfect couple who love each other deeply.
One day, Rachel sees Megan with another man. She is outraged, because she believes that Megan is throwing away her perfect life. She gets even more drunk than usual, and tells some other drunk ladies that she’d like to smash Megan’s head in because of what Megan did and then blacks out, as she often does.
She wakes up the next morning in her apartment, covered in blood with no memory of what happened the night before. She finds out that Megan has gone missing and begins to wonder if she may be the culprit. And that’s just the first 20 minutes.
The complex plot of “The Girl on the Train” is only one of a list of flaws that relegates this potentially great thriller into mediocrity. The film comes across as an over-sexualized afternoon soap opera with stereotypical characters and a complicated plot that relies too heavily on its mitigating final twist.
Starring Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, and Rebecca Ferguson as Rachel, Megan, and Anna, respectively, the film’s acting is surpringly shabby. With an actor like Blunt, I expected strong acting, but the characters themselves never grow beyond basic tropes with, at best, foggy motives and generic dialogue.
While apparently a faithful adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ 2015 novel, the film never quite measures up to the psychological thriller that its trailers promised it to be. There were times when the film came so close to being truly thrilling, but the best of those times left me feeling more uncomfortable with some explicit act of sexuality or violence or both than actually thrilled or tense.
The film’s failings can be mostly attributed to director Tate Taylor’s lack of experience. The novice director has only directed six films to date, and his shortcomings become evident in this film.
Confusing storyline and poorly created mood aside, the fiilm’s one redeeming quality is its final plot twist, which adds a little bit of surprise to the film and allows for some moderately thrilling final moments.I won’t disclose this twist, but if you really want to know it, read the book and create your own mood and acting with the power of your imagination. I’m almost positive you’ll do a better job.
Overall, “The Girl on the Train” leaves much to be desired for a viewer expecting a true psychological thriller. The complex plot is muddled by fuzzily motivated acting and characters that don’t grow enough or at all. The mood doesn’t reach its full potential, and despite a final twist that resolves some of the complexities of the plot, the film just doesn’t measure up to what its trailers made it out to be.