This article contains major pillager forThe Girl on the Train , the newfangled thriller based on the hugely successful novel by Paula Hawkins .

The new movieThe Girl on the Trainstacks mystery atop enigma , and tucks reveal inside reveals . But one interrogative sentence will forever and a day remain unrequited : how did it go so wrong , only to goso right ?

base on the popular book , The Girl on the Trainshould have amounted to a merriment , trashy night at the cineplex or a must - keep an eye on whenever it arrived on HBO . Rachel ( Emily Blunt ) is an alcohol-dependent divorcée who rides the train past her erstwhile theatre each evening to pick up a glance of what could have been . Her X , Tom ( Justin Theroux ) , is still residing there , but now he ’s with homewrecker Anna ( Rebecca Ferguson ) and their baby , and generally know the life that Rachel would like to have . hold up two doors down from Tom and Anna is Megan ( Haley Bennett ) , a shin ingenue whom Rachel frequently sees through her depressive fog , and who may or may not be hooking up with another guy – and in wide daylight !   One nighttime , Rachel make a sottish decisiveness to skip off the wagon train and screw with happy homewrecker Anna – a confrontation Rachel ca n’t recall later , which becomes a job when it turns out that Megan was dispatch that very same night .

emily blunt girl on the train

Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train|Universal Pictures

If only this convoluted but interesting frame-up were any fun .   LikeGone Girl , The Girl on the Trainbounces between perspectives , including Megan ’s pre - trauma timeline , to maximize the surprise . ButThe Girl on the Trainstrains to wring suspense from the best - sell generator material . Blunt , who ’s typically subtler than her name suggests , spends so much time sniffling , yammering , and panic , you ’d mean she was starring in a presidential debate . Rebecca Ferguson , last attend recoil ass inMission : Impossible - Rogue Nation , and Haley Bennett , last catch kicking keister inThe Magnificent Seven , are stick as floundering married woman who do the opposite of kick ass .

The moving picture also worship Justin Theroux , Luke Evans , and Édgar Ramírez , the male person opposite number winding up the women , as slab of beef worth starve over , despite not displaying any redeeming qualities beyond " look honorable in Abercrombie . " ( you may almost understand Megan pull up stakes her married man for a cat who can pull off Chelsea charge like Ramírez , but then you remember her eight tons of psychological baggage and go back to not corrupt it . )

Director Tate Taylor ( The helper ) ca n’t counterbalanceThe Girl on the Train ’s horrors . There ’s no Lifetime original moving-picture show camp or the variety of sinister hilarity that can change state a horrifying offence into a hilariousCoen brothers movie . rather , it ’s drome soft-cover therapy , where dependance , obsession , sexual hunger , and the plights of motherhood are condemnation to inhibit through the cranking of an emotional bench vise . The handwriting ca n’t wander these plights through the central mystery because the cardinal mystery barely exists ; only after an 60 minutes of drowning in her own grief , and an minute of Taylor drowning the audience in the crinkled slow - motion of ' 90s true - law-breaking reenactments , does Rachel summon the fortitude to explore for answers surrounding Megan ’s fade . Even then , she ’s her own worst foeman , and the revelations are n’t satisfying ( unless remembering amnesia - intoxicate second through a pounding hangover sounds like a blast ) .

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But just when you ’ve given up on the whole thing as being unredeemable , a wrench ending comes along and makes you pay attention all over again . In fact , The Girl on the Train ’s greatest closed book is how it could fail so hard yet have an ending that ’s so all-fired good .

Consider this a big old pillager warning : click away now if you do n’t need to know how this moving-picture show ends .

In the last 10 minute , Rachel realize that her ex , Tom ( Theroux ) , spend most of their spousal relationship take reward of her drink problem and gaslighting her into obliviousness . And she also remembers that , on the night she follow to town to tidy sum with Anna , the dark she ca n’t remember , Tom ticktack the crap out of her in a park and then rode off with Megan , his new buff . That same nighttime , as Anna learns through secret text messages and Rachel discovers via the magical thought transference that one win through years of stiff vodka intake , Tom finds out that Megan is fraught with his child . Two minutes of rage later on , Megan is bushed and bury in the woods .

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The Girl on the Traincrescendoes with digit - pointing , slappy assault , and Tom ’s confession , a moonstruck justification for murder that will make workforce ’s rights activists confess . The human lives for damaging the women in his aliveness . The movie delight in his dopiness to authorize Rachel and Anna , who end their shared husband with a corkscrew to the cervix . Even as he ’s bleeding out on the finely trimmed lawn , Anna wind the pointed edge a few more times . Its such operatic justice that both women salute his blood in victory would almost play . Almost .

To be clear : the end ofThe Girl on the Traindoesn’t free the way ofThe Girl on the Train , a testing two time of day of meandering miserablism that ends with a hardy " Inferno yeah . " Is the finale earned , or was Blunt and Ferugson finally confiscate the screen a gasp of air after a long dive ? Make that twoThe Girl on the Trainmysteries that will remain unresolved .

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rebecca ferguson girl on the train

Rebecca Ferguson and Justin Theroux in The Girl on the Train|Universal Pictures