This week, the spotlight has been turned to a screenplay, in which its feature was released to cinemas in 2016 and was adapted by Erin Cresseda Wilson from the infamous novel of the same title, originally written by Paula Hawkins.
The story revolved around the life of a middle-aged woman, by the name of Rachel, who takes the train to Manhattan every day for work and finds herself unravelled into a web of lies that does no one any good.
Rachel, very early on in the script, is described as a raging alcoholic who, in fact, doesn’t even travel to Manhattan every day for work, she travels there purely just to sit in an Oyster Bar all day.
Throughout these trips to Manhattan every day, she discovers a young couple living by the train tracks, only a few doors down from Rachel’s old home. A home in which Rachel’s recent divorcee, Tom, lives in with his new wife, Anna.
Erin Cresseda Wilson portrays Rachel as a very mysterious and strange woman, the kind that talks to themselves on the train and stares into the homes of people nearby. But as the story develops and truths unfold, we learn just why Rachel is the way that she is.
The plot really begins to develop, the moment Rachel witnesses Megan, one half of the young couple she has been admiring for weeks now, kissing another man on the balcony of her home.
For reasons we later find out, this sparks a fire within Rachel and spurs her on to become involved in a never-ending web of lies that only lead to people’s lives at risk.
The story essentially revolves around 5 people: Tom and his new wife Anna, Megan, and her partner Scott, and of course Rachel who lies at the centre of the plot.
What starts out as a thrilling drama about a woman who becomes involves with her ex-husband’s new family, soon turns out to be a murder-mystery/who-dunnit kind of movie, that involves various twists that are difficult to see coming.
Despite a solid storyline at the base of this screenplay, some of the dialogue is rather cringy and goes as far as puts fellow readers off the script entirely. Some of the choices Cresseda Wilson takes with the character dialogue in this film, especially Rachel’s, is rather questionable.
As well as this, the number of flashbacks utilised to create a clearer picture amongst a messy storyline, is blown right out of proportion.
Just as the present-day plot seems to get going, we are instantly thrown into another flashback, and whilst this attempts to sweep up and clear things up for the present-day narrative, the constant changes in timeline become quite exhausting.
I, personally, would have been interested in the writer coming up with much more creative and intriguing ways to explain certain plot holes, instead of just playing the flashback card every other scene.
We eventually conclude the story with an ending that most of the audience could probably see coming from the get-go, which was a shame because the number of solid twists throughout this screenplay would lead you to believe they hay have one last trick up their sleeve for the finale.
Not only is the climax predictable, but the entire ending of the movie seemed way to rushed on paper. Once the story ends, the story literally ends. It almost seemed as though the writer had been so zoned in into creating a good storyline for the first 90% of the movie, that they rushed and didn’t seem to care about the last 10% once it came to it.
All in all, The Girl on the Train is a thrilling movie with a range of good characters with strong motives that is more than likely going to tie you down and keep you hooked for the majority of the screenplay’s duration.
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