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Title: The Girl on the Train (2016)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Emily Blunt | ... | Rachel | |
| Haley Bennett | ... | Megan | |
| Rebecca Ferguson | ... | Anna | |
| Justin Theroux | ... | Tom | |
| Luke Evans | ... | Scott | |
| Edgar Ramírez | ... | Dr. Kamal Abdic (as Édgar Ramírez) | |
| Laura Prepon | ... | Cathy | |
| Allison Janney | ... | Detective Riley | |
| Darren Goldstein | ... | Man in the Suit | |
| Lisa Kudrow | ... | Martha | |
 |
Cleta Elaine Ellington | ... | Oyster Bar Woman (as Cleta E. Ellington) |
| Lana Young | ... | Doctor | |
| Rachel Christopher | ... | Woman with Child | |
|
|
Fernando Medina | ... | Pool Player |
| Gregory Morley | ... | Officer Pete | |
The Girl on the Train is the story of Rachel Watson's life post-divorce. Every day, she takes the train in to work in New York, and every day the train passes by her old house. The house she lived in with her husband, who still lives there, with his new wife and child. As she attempts to not focus on her pain, she starts watching a couple who live a few houses down -- Megan and Scott Hipwell. She creates a wonderful dream life for them in her head, about how they are a perfect happy family. And then one day, as the train passes, she sees something shocking, filling her with rage. The next day, she wakes up with a horrible hangover, various wounds and bruises, and no memory of the night before. She has only a feeling: something bad happened. Then come the TV reports: Megan Hipwell is missing. Rachel becomes invested in the case and trying to find out what happened to Megan, where she is, and what exactly she herself was up to that same night Megan went missing.
This is an excellent mystery/thriller that had me 'grasping at straws' for a solid hour or so, trying to figure out who was 'good' and who was 'bad.' And...it's punctuated with a "killer ending!" (Yes, pun intended ~)
Plot in a nutshell: An alcoholic loner subject to blackouts (Emily Blunt) immerses herself in a missing-persons case in which she becomes a prime suspect.
(First let me state I have not read the novel on which this film is based. So my review and impressions are formed solely from watching the movie, where they should be. It seems most of the negative reviews here are from people who read the novel, then apparently watched this film with a notepad in hand, already knowing the story and the outcome but eagerly marking down every area that doesn't match the book, and then coming here to write negative reviews to vent about it. No offense to them (or you, if you are one of them), but the point here is to review the FILM - not to compare and contrast the film to the novel (or to anything else, for that matter). If you want to write a review of the book, go to Goodreads.com and write it there! This site is for the film, and it's what I want to know about. All of these reviews on here telling me about the book, and then giving a poor rating because the film isn't exactly like the book, are irrelevant and out of place. Let's talk about the FILM....)
And yes, it's a very good one. Emily Blunt does such a masterful job of playing an alcoholic social outcast, I agree with some others on here wondering why she wasn't even nominated for an Academy Award. It's that good. She plays one of three women around whom the story largely revolves (Rebecca Ferguson and Haley Bennett are the others). These three are all loosely connected in various ways that are not obvious at first but, through flashbacks and story shifts, we are gradually shown how they tie together. One of the three goes missing and the plot then shifts to solving that mystery.
Saying much more than this will ruin the story so I'll draw the line there. But I will say I found this to be highly entertaining and was constantly shifting my opinion as to who was the guilty one. At one point I guessed right (as it turned out) but I changed my opinion based on what was happening, only to find out I had been right 20 minutes ago! But that's the beauty of this film - just when you think you've got it figured out, you are given a new shred of information that makes you question everything you'd accepted before. That's good story-telling and worthy of acclaim. It's not a stretch to say "The Girl on the Train" comes from the same mold as the Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock classics. If you like those, you'll probably like this too.
8/10. Effective and intriguing mystery that deserves a much higher rating than it's current 6.5 here. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: Yes.