Sometimes you’ve had a long day at the office and, despite starting it all out with a drop-the-dumbbell-and-flip-the-bird workout and a fresh-made green juice, the time has come to fill yourself with a big shifting pile of badness. I felt the clammy fingers of this mean need around 9 tonight, and luckily our nation’s capital was there with countless ways to whack that mole and stuff myself with evil. From this smorgasbord of deferred despair I selected (1) a veritable feast at a recently-renovated (and quite tasty) Johnny Rockets followed by (2) a hearty selection of film concessions and (3) an advance screening of The Girl on the Train.
I now regret all three. Two were pleasing in the moment. Emily Blunt was good in the other.
The Girl on the Train is kind of like Gone Girl, inasmuch as I understand both were popular thriller-type emotional dark-side-of-romance novels featuring soul-searching female protagonists in a world of crooked dudes who justify their paranoia. But unlike Gone Girl, this one isn’t directed by David Fincher, it doesn’t have a particularly engaging plotline, and it’s slow as all get out. It’ll presumably make money, but so do some truly lousy hot dog stands. I wouldn’t send you to either.
First, let me say that I almost bought the book for a flight to South America the other week. Knowing it was coming out as a film — and liking the trailer song — I figured I’d get a jump on it. But I checked the Amazon reviews, where I saw post after post complaining about a depressing and self-indulgent story. “I hated every single one of the characters.” Stuff like that. (I decided to stick with rewatching The Breakfast Club and Take Me Home Tonight, which are good decisions always.)
Anyway, I can report that those reviews — at least the cross section I read — were spot on. This is a story of Rachel with the Bad Hair (Blunt), a bleary-eyed washed-up divorcee with a drinking problem who rides the Metro North more than a certified hobo and from this rumbling perch fanatically ogles one perfect upstate family in one perfect upstate house. We soon learn Rachel used to live next door, you see, and that her ex husband Tom (Justin Theroux) now has a new brood (wife Anna, the terrific Rebecca Ferguson, and babe in arms); but the real focus of her attention is Megan (played with sufficient ennui by girl du jour Haley Bennett), who (we’re told) represents the kind of gleaming young love Rachel doesn’t seem to deserve in life.
As the film’s promotional materials gleefully divulge, one day peeping Rachel spies Something Shocking from the train (!) and is compelled to meddle in everything to sort it out. In so doing she must confront not only her tendency to get black-out drunk (along with her status as an unreliable narrator), but just about every manifestation of self-important inadequacy, loathing, vague regret, and self-doubt you can think of. She’s not the most sympathetic character for the bulk of the film, and — Amazon was right! — neither is anyone else. I pretty much despised everyone in this movie, at least when they did or said anything. Which was only about half of the time, because this film is S-L-O-W. It’s also depressing.
Emily Blunt does do a legitimately good job with her part, but it’s a thankless slog. The story itself isn’t awful — it’s a mildly Fatal-Attraction-esque little families-rent-asunder potboiler with fog and dew and a few extra players — but it lacks the heady payoff of a true thriller. It’s the kind of film that would earn a decent nod playing on late-night TV in a summer cabin, for instance. The fact that a substantial portion of its audience will already know the story, well, I’m not sure which way that cuts.
But I’ll tell you this: if you want a fun night at the movies, see something else.
Haus Verdict: If you think humans are doomed to circle the cosmic drain while whining incessantly about our own feelings and failings, this should fit nicely into your worldview. If not, Girl on the Train is just a clammy wet blanket that takes two hours to unroll.
The Girl on the Train opens Friday October 7.
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