3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Girl on the Train

2016, Tate Taylor (Ava) -- Amazon

This was not the movie I thought it was going to be. At first blush, I assumed it was going to be a pivot on Rear Window wherein someone who is an "innocent" voyeur of a complete stranger's life gets wrapped up in a disappearance and murder investigation. And it is about that, but also, nobody is innocent and nobody is really a stranger. And unlike most movies, where the "reveal" (more like unveiling) was known to me going in, the only thing I knew about this movie were original trailers, which deftly didn't reveal ... anything?

Rachel (Emily Blunt, The Fall Guy) rides the train every day to Manhattan from Westchester County. She leans against the window, sipping on her water bottle, watching the scenery but in particular, one house, one woman. Like many of us, she imagines a background, a story, a life for this woman. The woman has a loving husband, a lovely house, and an idyllic life. Then Rachel sees her with another man, and then Rachel sees in the news that the woman in the house has disappeared.

Its hard to talk about the rest of the movie without spoiling everything, like pretty much every review, writeup and wiki article does so immediately. So, I won't bother trying. The movie does a very good job of letting us know further details in little dribbles. Oh, its not just that house Rachel fixates on, but the one a few doors down, another house with a beautiful blonde. Oh, that was her house, before her husband Tom (Justin Theroux, The Leftovers) cheated on her, and found himself a new wife, and a child. Oh, Rachel is not dealing well with the divorce and is living with a friend of hers, commuting to the city and getting angry-drunk, relating to others just how she was fucked over. Ohhh, its not water she is sipping from that bottle!

Meanwhile the movie also gives us a bit of Megan's (Haley Bennet, Borderlands) life, the unsatisfied beautiful blonde that Rachel fixates on. Her husband Scott (Luke Evans, Dracula Untold) is controlling, demanding. She used to work, once as a gallery director, more recently as a nanny for ... well, Rachel's ex and new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson, Dune: Part One). Megan has lots of sex but is unhappy. Once she disappears, Rachel decides to insinuate herself into Megan's husband's life, convinced he must have done it because Megan was cheating. At the same time she is an unwanted, drunken presence near her ex-husband's house and new family. And she's unravelling as quickly as the story is unveiling more and more truths.

Despite all three women in the movie being troubled, living troubled lives, in the end, the blame falls squarely on the men in the movie. It goes from us, the viewer, making our judgments on the women in much the way Rachel does on Megan, to revealing to us how unfair we are being, and surprisingly to me, how (as Marmy put it) we cannot trust the (gaslighted) narrator. The men run the gamut from self-serving to downright evil.

The movie is a solid thriller, if a little trite. But I think that's the point? Its a trashy, messy story but with the statement that we shouldn't pass judgement so quickly.

Note, the novel was based in the UK and considering three of the leads were British, I wonder if early development had the movie in London, and not NYC. Also, this movie did REALLY well at the box office, almost a decade ago, at the ... middle (??) of the era of "why aren't people going to the movie as much?" yet I feel very very sold in saying this is not the kind of movie theatre goers would flock to now. Weird.