The Girl on the Train

Infidelity, catfighting, psychosis. The juicy qualities of daytime soap operas and tawdry female-empowerment thrillers on cable television are evident throughout The Girl on The Train, except the film seems oblivious that it belongs in such company.

This slick adaptation of the Paula Hawkins best-seller from filmmaker Tate Taylor (The Help) takes itself way too seriously while conveying a lurid tale of three women caught in an intertwining web of deceit and murder.

The title character is Rachel (Emily Blunt), an alcoholic divorcee whose daily commute on the train takes her past the house she once shared with her ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), who left her for Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) and subsequently married her.

Still suffering from that psychological trauma, Rachel also makes frequent eye contact with Megan (Haley Bennett), who works as a nanny for Tom and Anna, but has relationship problems of her own. After Megan disappears, Rachel becomes a crusader for justice, meeting Megan’s husband (Luke Evans) and sharing suspicions of her own. But Rachel’s mental instability, rivalry with Anna, and heavy drinking blur the lines between truth and perception.

Fans of the book might be disappointed at some of the key changes here, such as altering the physical appearance of the characters and removing some key points of exposition and motivation. The film does retain the jumbled chronology and alternating points of view, however.

Taylor adds some stylish touches, but the potboiler screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson (Men, Women and Children) employs a variety of narrative gimmicks and erotic interludes in a strained attempt to ratchet up the suspense. Such tactics — artificially withholding key information from viewers, for example — might work better on the written page than they do on the big screen.

By the time the big twists come and the puzzle pieces fit together, the characters have become so unlikeable and the story has rendered itself so detached from reality that any meaningful emotional payoff is significantly muted.

As The Girl on the Train runs off the tracks, it needs to be zippier and campier to silence the unintentional giggles. The result might elicit a response similar to rubbernecking at a traffic accident, which might be appropriate considering the film’s voyeuristic subject matter, but doesn’t automatically mean it’s compelling.

Rated R, 112 minutes.