The Girl on the Train, directed by Tate Taylor, is a screen adaptation of the novel by Paula Hawkins. The movie cleverly alternates its narratives between three women: Rachel, Anna, and Megan. The film opens to Rachel our protagonist, who rides the train daily past her old house where her ex-husband Tom, his new wife Anna and their child live. Driven to drink after an affair Tom had with Anna, Rachel seems obsessed with the life she believes she deserves but cannot have.
Because of this, she spends each train journey watching their house and their next door neighbour Megan and her husband. It becomes apparent that she idealises the couple next door and believes them to be the embodiment of love she used to share with Tom.
The movie then switches narrative perspectives and we are then given Megan’s outlook and learn that her life isn’t as perfect as pictured by Rachel. She and her husband Scott in fact have a lot of problems in their marriage and the movie really takes off when Rachel witness Megan kissing another man outside her home.
Enraged by Megan’s betrayal of her marriage, an intoxicated Rachel follows her one evening with the intention of confronting her and suddenly wakes up without recollection of the previous night, covered in blood and dirt. When Megan turns up dead after the incident with Rachel we are only to assume the worst… That Rachel’s obsession got the better of her.
This ingenious mystery drama engrosses you into the lives of each of these women, and the lives they share with one-another. Tate allows his audience the opportunity to explore them each as people, thus making Megan’s death as real as if we were one of her neighbours too.
-By Jordan Blake
