This was an iTunes rental on January 21st. Based on Paula Hawkins' best selling book. The film is directed by Tate Taylor and stars Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramírez and Allison Janney.
The film opens with narration from Rachael Watson (Blunt) about how she rides Metro North and passes by this ideal couple on the way too and from work. She becomes obsessed with them. It turns out that Rachael is a fall down drunk, who is divorced from Tom (Theroux). Tom was cheating on Rachael with Anna (Ferguson). Tom and Anna marry and have a baby (Rachael couldn't conceive and that most likely led to her depression which led to her alcoholism). Rachael stalks Tom and Anna and even shows up drunk at their home ad grabs the baby on the premise she just wants to "hold it." There's also Megan Hipwell (Bennett), the twenty something hottie who works as a nanny for Tom and Anna. Megan is married to Scott (Evans) who's a bit of a jealous type.
Rachael gets off the train one night in a drunken stupor and has an encounter with whom she thinks is Anna but it's a blurry mess. Rachael wakes up the next morning all bloodied up and of course she can't remember the night before. Eventually Megan Hipwell is declared missing. Megan is a nubile hottie working as a nanny when the film opens and she gives some narration involving her backstory. It seems she enjoys sex because we see her having sex a lot and even seducing her shrink (Ramírez). Eventually Rachael is questioned by Detective Riley (Janney) about Megan's disappearance and despite being a suspect, she tries to help and even does some sleuthing on her own. Rachael meets with Scott Hipwell (Evans) and under the ruse of being a friend of Megan's she tells Scott that she saw Megan with another man on the balcony from the train, leaving out the part about her being drunk.
The police find Megan's body. It's a homicide. Rachael slowly starts to piece the events of the evening together. She goes to the police but Riley blows her off. The big finally takes place at the home of Tom and Anna where the big reveal is finally revealed.
There's a reason that this film only got a 43% Rotten Tomatoes rating, it's not that good. Now I never read the book myself, but my wife informed me that the book is much better. The main problem was that the film was marketed as the 2016 Gone Girl. It wasn't. Not even close. Both films have a lot of narration but that's where the similarities end. The film is incoherent at times and tries way too hard to be Gone Girl when it should've just tried to be it's own film.
There was nothing special about the acting, it wasn't bad per se, it was just meh. The pacing was also poor as the film has a 112 minute run time and it felt much longer. I'm the type of person who prefers to have my suspense films suspenseful. This wasn't the case here. Taylor tries to give the case for certain characters to be the killer and tries to fool you in the end. It just didn't work for me.
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