With a cast bragging the likes of Emily Blunt, Justin Theroux and Luke Evans, there is an expectancy of brilliancy attached to Tate Taylor’s The Girl On The Train: promising above-par acting, inventive script-writing and the overall basics of a good movie. Don’t let these assumptions fool you. This movie is most definitely the epitome of “hit or miss”.

At points it was difficult to decide whether Blunt was brilliantly projecting the personality of jobless alcoholic Rachel, or lazily drifting her way through scenes with less passion than if she were buttering a slice of burnt toast. While Hayley Bennett’s portrayal of new wife Megan was commendable, it was the context of the character that was puzzling. Her utterly unbelievable background added almost too much to this movie – packing in surplus information that just wasn’t needed to keep the plot flowing.

Even further: the one big problem with this movie was the lack of any strong female characters. Considering the ratio of XX to XY chromosomes in this 112-minute thriller flick, there was a definite deliverance of powerful male figures out-smarting and out-manoeuvring any helpless woman that crossed their paths.

With that said, the final twenty minutes were the unequivocal saviour for the lagging plot development that had come before. Without this, it would be completely justifiable to dub this movie as a Gone-Girl-gone-bad copycat: lacklustre, boring and the utmost opposite to what a thriller should be. But above-all, the shock-ending of this mysterious whodunnit was most definitely worth the 90 or so minutes of ‘other’ endured to get to the heart of this movie – utterly transforming the storyline from something two-dimensional and drab, to one worthy of the name ‘thriller’.

Emily Moscrop

(Image courtesy of Allstar/Dreamworks Skg)