‘The Girl on the Train’ Was Good

The movie.

I’m not a movie critic, though I do have impeccable taste. I’m more of a food critic. However, after seeing negative reviews of The Girl on the Train, Tate Taylor’s film adaptation of the popular murder mystery novel, I feel it is my duty as a blog contributor to make it clear to you the movie is not “so full of [plot] holes that you could use it to drain spaghetti.”

It’s good.

POINT: “It’s hazy in a way that’s more confusing than intriguing, and Taylor lacks the mastery of tone and form that Fincher has to pack the frame with little details that we can keep harking back to as the narrative progresses. It’s just a mess, sloppily edited and constructed, and it essentially sinks the second half of the film.”

COUNTERPOINT: No, it was good.

POINT: “The problem with the book, though, was that it was also frequently a hokey mess, and Tate Taylor’s new adaptation of The Girl on the Train takes the worst parts of the novel (excruciating dialogue, paper-thin plotting, ludicrous twists) and amplifies them, leaving little room for the nuance that made the novel compelling.”

COUNTERPOINT: No.

POINT: “There’s a story to be told there about judgment and emotional abuse and gaslighting and the like. But Wilson and Taylor seem to be very concerned that audiences won’t get it unless they paint it on a damn billboard, right down to a menacing male character spouting ‘you crazy women!’ as he prepares to do something totally crazy. That’s pretty bad, but what makes it worse is that it’s the second time in the film where it happens.”

COUNTERPOINT: It’s really good.

POINT: “In The Girl on the Train, characters speak not like human beings with motivations but like murder suspects whose every utterance must heighten the audience’s suspicion. A stranger Rachel frequently spots on the train (Darren Goldstein) was mysteriously present the night of the murder, but as seen in a hazy, poorly filmed flashback, she cannot remember why he was there. When Rachel confronts him, the man explains that he found her after a drunken fall and she refused his offer of help. Rachel, flabbergasted, wonders what could have possibly happened that night. He tells her, “It’s probably the worst thing you can imagine,” as if that’s something that people who have never spoken before casually say to each other.”

COUNTERPOINT: …Nah uh.

POINT: “Even the climactic reveal is short on fire, like a afternoon klatch everyone’s perturbed to find turning bloody.”

COUNTERPOINT: What even????

POINT: “It is with infinite regret, therefore, that I must report on the veil of dourness that settles over all three actresses in “The Girl on the Train.” None of them are allowed a flurry of wit or a lighthearted shrug, and to switch from Grace Kelly, in “Rear Window” — a movie that dared to suggest how much fun might be had from the wicked watching of other lives and the amateur probing of crimes — to Taylor’s heroines is to pass from luminescence to a zone of querulous gloom. The tale is set largely in a suburb on the Hudson, and nothing is duller or more stifling, as a rule, than people who wish to make it perfectly plain how stifled they feel by their dull suburban existence.”

COUNTERPOINT: It’s good.

POINT: “A case of hit and miss, this voyeuristic psychological thriller replete with time jumps and multiple points of view confuses and drags through its early scenes but comes together in the end.”

COUNTERPOINT: A case of wrong — but then right.

POINT: “Having never read Paula Hawkins’ bestseller, I held out hope for a third act surprise, some zag for a plot that’s only zigging. No dice, no differently from the author’s idea. Just a school of red herrings the size of dolphins and an Emily Blunt performance this story doesn’t deserve.”

COUNTERPOINT: Read the book for extra joy on top of this good movie.

POINT: “For about 75 minutes, The Girl on the Train chugs along so competently you can almost hear the rails clacking out a confident chant of “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…” But when the tracks start to bend sharply around a dead girl’s curve, it derails violently into a thicket of tangled contrivances that render it a crumpled heap.”

COUNTERPOINT: Wrong.

POINT: “It’s all rather dispiriting and not quite the fun, trashy, thriller romp I was hoping for. Neither does it become terribly exciting or suspenseful because of the fractured, episodic narrative and because the noose never really closes around Rachel’s neck.”

COUNTERPOINT: No.

POINT: “In the end, the film uncomplicates its once-interesting characters, either exonerating them or distilling their villainy into something rather banal. There are two major secrets revealed that, from far away, look like they’re related. But the closer you get to film, brushing aside dead leaves and examining the scene, the more you realize they actually have little to do with each other.”

COUNTERPOINT: In the end, the film makes you say, “Oh my god, the end was so good. I was screaming.”

POINT: “There’s always something to be said for an entertainment that sustains its nuttiness all the way to its twisty finish. This one may not make much sense, but — like a demented old film noir or a Shonda Rhimes show at its crazed best — “Girl” doesn’t falter in its absurdity or commitment to its own seriousness. It never winks. You may laugh (as the audience I saw it with did, on and off), but there’s genuine pleasure in that mirth.”

COUNTERPOINT: Wro — or no, this one is right.

POINT: “The screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Chloe) keeps the source material’s three narrators (Rachel, Anna, and Megan), but Taylor’s indifference to perspective — exacerbated by a confused and tiresome flashback structure — ensures that they are all equally useless. He can’t frame something as elementary as the point of view of a passenger on a moving train, and only ever stumbles into camp unintentionally.”

COUNTERPOINT: Wrong.

POINT: “It’s not unimportant, but when location scouting is the most striking aspect of a film, something’s awry. And sadly this mystery fails to intrigue.”

COUNTERPOINT: Wrong.

POINT: “Although the supporting cast is strong, no one has much to do in a procedural that classic film fans might well suss out within the first twenty minutes.”

COUNTERPOINT: Wrong.

POINT: “I got depressed early, when I realized I’d be spending two hours in the hands of people who didn’t know how to tell a story.”

COUNTERPOINT: Wrong.

MY RATING: