Review of The Girl on the Train (2016) by Frame R — 03 Apr 2018

Emily Blunt is the new peeping tom on the slowest-moving train in existence!

This is clearly what I call a "performances piece", a movie driven by great acting. Emily Blunt gives a masterful performance while portraying a mess of a woman, I mean, she does look hasn't-slep-in-days awful. I consider her one of our greater modern actresses and she does one thing that is quite rare and it's one of the things I appreciate more about a performance: she conveys emotion almost solely through her eyes. She doesn't need to speak, I simply can tell what her characters are feeling with a glance; and that was as true in Sicario as it is here. She carries the movie to such an extent that it prevents the director to have but one point of view. He focuses so much on Blunt that he gets fearful when pulling back and give us a wide shot when it was necessary. Indeed, this film is a showcase of good performances both male and especially female. Allison Janney and Rebecca Ferguson are wonderful supporters but Haley Bennett (which I loved in "Magnificent Seven") has a really addictive performance. But that is not all that matters and sometimes it feels choppy and has a TV movie feel to it, specially in the last part. This is a great risk when we deal with suburbia stories and that's why David Fincher managed to subvert it so much that the suburban neighborhood became a character in Gone Girl. Despite all faults, it manages to fulfill its point: it keeps you guessing all the way through, it's a solid female-driven psycho-thriller nail-biter of a movie.