Memories of Murder: Girl on a Train (2016)
Stripping away the psychology and introspection, the movie lacks the guts to be entertaining trash.
When Paula Hawkins’ debut novel Girl on the Train was released, it became an instant sensation, partly because of the similarities between Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Both featured multiple narrators telling a story of possible murder; the flawed characters are driven by dark impulses that lead them into morally questionable acts. The success of the novel meant that Girl on the Train was adapted for a movie before the book was even published. But while the movie follows the mystery in the novel well enough, it fails when it comes to depicting the inner lives of the three central women.
The Story
Unhappily divorced, Rachel Watson sits on the train every day, drinking and staring at her old neighborhood where her ex-husband Tom lives with his new wife Anna and their child. She becomes interested in a couple she sees near her old house and fixates on the woman, Megan. When she sees Megan kissing a man who is not her husband, she is furious. That changes to fear when Megan disappears and is later found dead. Rachel’s alcoholic blackouts and continued investigation into Megan’s life, make her a suspect, but she soon realizes that the clues to the murder are much closer to home.
The Adaptation
Paula Hawkins’ bleak novel is moody with self-reflections. The three main characters — Rachel, Anna and Megan — take turns narrating, and the reader gets lost in the denseness of their memories, longing to understand themselves better. It’s easy to get caught up in the stream-of-consciousness minds of these women and all the minute details of their life. Because we’re so deeply in their minds, it’s easy to ignore the fact that the novel’s plot is utterly ludicrous. Take this women out of their ruminations and you’re left with women with far too much time on their hands.
The movie has a dreary atmosphere; without the long internal monologues, the characters seem cold inside and out. Any warm scenes are lit with a golden nostalgic glow, but those are few and far in-between. While Emily Blunt manages to convincingly portray a depressed alcoholic, she’s nowhere near as pathetic or out of control as Rachel in the book, who actively repulses people. You can sense her misery, but not her self-destructive longing for her ex-husband and her old life. Justin Theroux’s square-jawed sternness gives the ending away far too early, and while Rebecca Fergueson looks the part of a serene second wife and mother, she rarely has an emotional scene. Haley Bennett plays Megan as dead-eyed and bored with bouts of rage, and it’s a totally unappealing performance. Still, there’s not much to do with Megan’s character, a constantly horny “manic-pixie” type who has sex compulsively but can love only her dead child. We see the murder in flashback, but even at the climax, there’s never a sense of mortal danger.
The movie is largely faithful to the book, but that’s not really saying much. While Hawkins reveled in making her characters less and less likable as the story goes on, the characters in the movie are relatively static. The audience has been lulled into a stupor by the hazy cinematography and lack of depth in the characters; despite their obsession with each other, the three women never seem to be as linked as they do in the novel.
This is a fatal flaw. Girl on a Train is essentially a story of women and their inner lives; the men all just at the periphery of their existence. The women in the movie remain distinct from each other; there’s no sense of interconnection. If Hawkins’ novel is too full of introspection, then the movie is completely lacking in it. Without that, the murder mystery is little more than a Lifetime Movie. If Girl on the Train had taken itself less seriously, it would probably result in gleeful pleasure rather than confusing drabness.
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