This was not the movie I expected it to be.

I haven’t read the book and so I went into this movie quite blind, I had seen the trailer and understood some of the premise, but the actual movie that was presented to me was something completely different to what I expected.

The Girl on the Train follows Rachel, a divorcee who takes a train every day to New York and passes by her old home that she owned with her husband Tom. Tom now lives there with his new wife Anna and their baby daughter Evie, however something changes when their neighbour Megan goes missing.

As Rachel is always on this train she has been seeing Megan as she goes by and started noticing weird things happening, including the fact that Megan was seeing someone else behind her husband’s back. It’s an interesting tale of adultery, accidental pregnancy, and affairs gone wrong.

I really enjoyed this movie. I felt as more was revealed to us it just got more intriguing and exciting. I feel from the early days you could kind of tell who the bad guy was, it was kind of like in Scooby Doo where you only have a set number of characters so it must be one of them and it’s not gonna be any of the gang is it? So finding out who murdered Megan wasn’t that much of a shock but the tale leading up to finding out who it was, was very interesting.

This movie reminded me of Only Mine because we got to see a lot of gaslighting and a lot of abuse happening that wasn’t just physical. It was interesting to see Rachel, this drunk divorcee, constantly be bought down because of the issues that she has when she is probably the most tuned in character of them all. But of course, because she is the way she is, you immediately discredit her because how can the drunk’s word be gospel when even she can’t remember what happened?

I loved seeing this movie from the different characters’ aspects, so we start with Rachel and get to know her and get to know why she’s on the train and why she’s looking at this particular house, then we get to see Anna and how she is in this house with Tom and their lives, and then we get to see Megan, and her chats with her therapist are really interesting especially as she is such a complex character. I definitely saw a lot of Megan‘s character in Amy from Gone Girl, in that they both have a lot of layers to them and a lot of secrets, and as the movie progresses you get to see more and more of who they are.

In some ways I did feel this movie ended a bit abruptly and it would’ve been nice to see more of Megan and Tom’s interactions and, especially with Tom being so abusive, seeing more of him like that too because we didn’t get a lot of depth with him. But I did enjoy this film and I would recommend it, although a rewatch probably wouldn’t be on the cards unless I really wanted to see if there were many foreshadowing moments leading up to the big reveal at the end.

I would recommend this movie especially for people who haven’t seen it or haven’t read the book. I feel if you go in blind it could be really interesting to see what you think of the story, and then reading the book and seeing how it differs, because in films you often can’t include all the moments from the book because there’s so many, but I feel it was a bit rushed at the end and maybe things are more explored in the book.

What do you think of The Girl on the Train?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding