The Girl on the Train
2016 · Directed by Tate Taylor
Original language: English
- crime
- mystery
- thriller
The story
Rachel Watson, devastated by her recent divorce, spends her daily commute fantasizing about the seemingly perfect couple who live in a house that her train passes every day, until one morning she sees something shocking happen there and becomes entangled in the mystery that unfolds.
What it’s like
Washed-out suburban greys and muted greens give this one a damp, grey-brown unease, with the commuter train's rattling window framing the same hedge-lined houses again and again until they feel faintly watched. Tate Taylor shoots much of it in tight handheld close-ups that stay on Emily Blunt's face through hangovers and blank stretches, while the flashback structure bleeds one timeline into another, so the picture itself seems to lose its footing. The score is brooding and low, pulsing under the scenes rather than announcing them. Its vibe is bleary, tense, and sour, the kind of watch suited to a grey weekday evening with the lights low, or a rainy night when you want a thriller that stays inside a fractured head. Intensity is moderate to high: drinking and blackouts are shown frankly, sexual content and infidelity appear on screen, and there is a brutal, sudden act of violence along with a homicide, rendered with more dread than gore. The pacing is steady and deliberately disorienting, and the emotional register is cold and suspicious, following a woman sliding through grief and self-doubt as she tries to trust her own memory. Made for viewers who enjoy unreliable narrators, domestic noir, and mysteries that unravel through unsettling, claustrophobic perspective.
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