The Girl on the Train (15) ★★★★
Directed by: Tate Taylor
Starring: Emily Blunt, Justin Theroux & Luke Evans

What's the story?

Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) fantasises about having a perfect life, and longs to come home to a loving husband and a family, within a warm, safe and secure home.

But Rachel’s daydreams are in stark contrast to her own grey and dull existence. In reality, her husband Tom (Justin Theroux) has left her for another woman, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), and now it is Tom and Anna who are living the perfect life.

Turning to alcohol to ease her pain, Rachel's torment isn’t helped by the fact that her train to and from work passes her old home where Tom now lives with Anna.

So, tuning out on the train every day, Rachel notices a young couple who live on the same street as Tom and Anna and, she notices that the young couple seem to be very much in love and living an idyllic life.

But appearances can be deceiving, and when the lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur, Rachel’s life begins to unravel right before her eyes.

Any good?

AN adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s best-selling novel, there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye in this dark and perplexing mystery in which a young woman’s dreams are dashed amid disappointment and delusion.

It’s a harrowing set-up and director Tate Taylor certainly knows how to lay each intricate layer of this fascinating mystery with patience and finesse.

Taylor, who directed the Oscar winning drama The Help, treats Hawkins’s story with kid gloves and, his adaptation brings the complex relationships to life with a subtle and assured hand.

And the story is complex, there’s many a MacGuffin and red herring woven into the intricate web of a plot, and I’m not going to ruin things for you with unnecessary spoilers. Needless to say, The Girl on the Train is best enjoyed with your mind as a blank canvas, it’s best to embrace the ensuing emotional turmoil with a free mind.

The cast are all fit for purpose in this haunting tale, Emily Blunt is mesmerising as Rachel, a woman whose notions of reality and fantasy are muddied and confused, indeed Blunt sinks into the quagmire of confusion within Rachel’s mind.

And, there’s solid support from the likes of the solid Justin Theroux and the steely eyed Luke Evans.

Final word?

A complex and perplexing murder mystery with sure performances and an intricately webbed story, The Girl on the Train is an engrossing thriller that's not to be missed.