Cinemavenger

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The Girl on the Train

So, I'm out at the bar the other night, and I meet Jen and Emma.  Jen could be Aubrey Plaza's hotter sister; Emma's a dead ringer for Margot Robbie, and fuck me if I'm lying . . . they're roommates.  Don't ask me how, but we end up back at their place, and faster than you can say "Dear Penthouse Forum," I'm the overjoyed meat in a Jen-Emma sandwich.

Only, I'm actually a 14-year-old girl from the suburbs with braces, super strict parents and a My Little Pony collection.

Or am I?

That's what you call being an "unreliable narrator."  For the uninitiated, an unreliable narrator is a device second-rate, shit-sipping writers use to punch up un-thrilling thrillers and mystery-less mysteries.

The Girl on the Train couldn't exist without its unreliable narrator, Rachel Watson (Emily "Philly" Blunt).  Rachel is both the prime suspect in and amateur investigator of a murder.  Because Rachel is a mentally unstable, alcoholic, divorcee even she doesn't know if she did it.  She's the only one, though.  Whether you read the book or see the movie, you'd have to be the dumbest rock in the box not to suss out who the killer is within the first 20 pages or minutes, respectively.

Is it raving Rachel who spied on the dead girl from a commuter train as she rode past her house twice a day for years?  The dead girl's angry, hunky hubby, Scott (Luke "I Am Your Father" Evans)?  Rachel's ex-husband, Tom (Justin "It To Win It" Theroux), who the dead girl worked for as a nanny?  Tom's Rachel-hating, farmers' market-haunting new wife, Anna (Rebecca "Son of Ferg" Ferguson)?  Some other random character, like the staring stranger on the train, you thought was merely a distraction?

I'll never tell.  Or will I?

It was Scott.  Or was it?

How the fuck did they even get away with calling it The Girl on the Train?  These days, if a guy calls any female over the age of 13 a "girl," he's instantly branded a sexist pig, and some broad is screaming that, "It's 'woman!'" while another chick yells, "It's 'lady!'" and from across the street a red-faced gash shrieks, "How do you even know 'she' identifies as female, you prick!"

Not unlike other recent, far better (read: Fincher-directed) Girls - you know, the one with the dragon tattoo and the gone one - this Girl wants to be a ball-busting, Helen Reddy-ready yawp about how men are all evil slaves to their scary penises.  Which, of course, it does by making its women characters lying wack jobs, lying bitches and lying sluts.

Because that makes sense.  Or does it?

It does not.

The Girl on the Train is one fuckrehensibly dull wannabe murder mystery.  It never builds a tea kettle's worth of steam, but it still flies off the tracks.

October 7, 2016