‘Girl on the Train’ makes its way to our screens tomorrow, hoping to secure a mere fraction in cinema tickets what it’s already achieved in book sales.
Generally tagged with the same ‘dark woman narrator’ as its adapted predecessor ‘Gone Girl’, it tells the story of a woman, Rachel, brought to drink by infertility and a failed marriage. Instead of living her dream life, she sits on the train on a daily commute, gazing out... at the house that should have been hers, the husband she lost and the perfect blonde wife now tending his child.
Just along the way is another equally impossibly perfect pairing, a husband and wife who seemingly can’t get enough of each other, until Rachel spots the woman with another man. From there, chaos descends...
What do the critics say? Well, they’re not exactly gushing. The good news is, it’s probably going to prove a critic-proof success after all the book sales and a pretty overwhelming publicity campaign, most of it... on the train, naturally. Here’s a sample of the thoughts on offer:
Brian Viner, Daily Mail **
Just about everyone is either messed up, brutish, smarmy, selfish, over-sexed, or all of the above, so that by the time The Girl On The Train eventually gets to its destination, you wish either that it had taken a different route, or that you hadn’t bothered to go along for the ride.
(Read the full review here)
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian **
This hottest of literary properties lands with a lukewarm splat on the movie screen: a guessable contrivance with a biggish plothole… Fans of Paula Hawkins’s thriller might find themselves sticking to the book.
(Read the full review here)
Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter *
The two main men, Tom and Scott, are humorless, ornery, sexually presumptuous and incapable of saying an interesting word about anything. The women aren’t much better: the sullen Megan resembles a beautiful zombie, Anna can think or speak of little other than her baby, and Rachel only with great difficulty emerges from her booze-soaked cocoon. Taylor’s first feature was called ‘Pretty Ugly People’; that could equally serve as the title for this one.
All of this wouldn’t matter quite so much if the central mystery had been more compelling. But the ever-present possibility of trick endings to the side, it isn’t too difficult to come up with the most rational supposition as to who the baddie is, and the revelation, when it comes, isn’t the least bit gasp-inducing.
(Read the full review here)
Owen Gleiberman, Variety
As a big-screen thriller, “The Girl on a Train” is just so-so, but taken as 112 minutes of upscale psychodramatic confessional bad-behavior porn, it generates a voyeuristic zing that’s sure to carry audiences along… “The Girl on the Train” is sexy, brutal, diary-of-a-mad-housewife trash made with a distinctive creamy classy empathy… Put in demographic terms, a movie like this one fills an essential niche for women moviegoers, and they will likely revel in every sneaky, lurid moment of it. But that same audience should also realize that it ultimately deserves better than decently executed female-gaze victimization pulp.
(Read the full review here)
‘Girl on the Train’ is in UK cinemas from tomorrow.