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The Girl On The Train stars Emily Blunt as Rachel, the titular lady and functioning alcoholic, staring out from her train cabin, spotting the young woman who leans out of 15 Beckett Road, and over-imagining that she has the perfect life which Rachel’s been longing for. Why so obsessed? Sure, as the intro tells us, she used to live nearby at No.13, but that was a different time.
The mysterious woman is Megan (The Magnificent Seven‘s Haley Bennett), again shown to us in the intro, talking things over with her therapist, Dr Abdic (Point Break 2015‘s Edgar Ramirez). She’s also a nanny to Anna (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation‘s Rebecca Ferguson).
With a timeline that jumps back and forth, we see past moments in Rachel’s life that show the things for which she wishes she could attain, whilst a situation leads to Megan going missing and the mystery needs to be put together about how all the pieces fit. It took about 15-20 minutes to get into the story, but once I had, I really enjoyed how it drip-feeds the plot to you, and that runs the entire length of the film. It’s so well done.
The best scenes are those which feature Emily Blunt, surely putting in a career-best performance, here, but there is good support from Miss Bennett as Megan, even though I wasn’t originally expecting her to be a major part of the film after seeing the trailer; and although it needs the other characters, the film loses its flow a bit when Miss Blunt’s NOT onscreeen.
It’s a shame that I missed this in the cinema originally, as it would’ve made my Top 10 Best Movies of 2016 , but then some another great film would’ve been bumped (in fact, two, as I had a joint No.10 for both Anomalisa and Sweet Bean, which scored 8/10 apiece – and this is higher), so you can’t win everything.
Note: This review is for the film only.
Score: 9/10
The Girl On The Train is released today on Blu-ray and DVD, and click on the packshot for the full-size image.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 112 minutes
Year: 2016
Released: February 6th 2017
Studio: Entertainment One
Widescreen: 1.85:1 (Super 35)
Director: Tate Taylor
Producers: Jared LeBoff and Marc Platt
Screenplay: Erin Cressida Wilson (based on the novel by Paula Hawkins)
Music: Danny Elfman
Cast:
Rachel: Emily Blunt
Megan: Haley Bennett
Anna: Rebecca Ferguson
Tom: Justin Theroux
Scott: Luke Evans
Dr. Kamal Abdic: Édgar Ramírez
Cathy: Laura Prepon
Detective Riley: Allison Janney
Man in the Suit: Darren Goldstein
Martha: Lisa Kudrow
Oyster Bar Woman: Cleta E Ellington
Doctor: Lana Young
Woman with Child: Rachel Christopher
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.