Tate Taylor (2016)
I sat through it but two hours is long enough to waste on The Girl on the Train so this note will be short. Among the actors whose talents are wasted – and largely concealed – in the adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s best-selling novel are Emily Blunt (in the title role), Allison Janney, Luke Evans and Édgar Ramírez. Sad to say, this lurid yet benumbed film is the work of Tate Taylor (The Help, Get on Up). It’s less surprising that Erin Cressida Wilson (Fur, Chloe) perpetrated the by-the-numbers screenplay. The setting of Hawkins’s psychological thriller has been changed from London to New York. How faithful or otherwise the film is to its source I don’t know and won’t trouble to find out by reading the book: the storyline and relationships suggest the original may have fancied itself as a Gone Girl-ish critique of the balance and abuse of power in male-female relationships. The wretched movie doesn’t rise even to the level of violently nasty but lively trash. Danny Elfman’s monotonous score supplies an entirely apt accompaniment.
14 October 2016
