The Girl on the Train
Universal Pictures | Release Date: October 7, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
48
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 49 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
27
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattOct 3, 2016
[Taylor] deftly translates the bleak, raw-boned menace and tricky time signatures of Train’s intertwined plotlines, and draws remarkably vivid performances from his cast, particularly his two female leads. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoOct 3, 2016
It might be a tad light when matched against the wittiest mysteries, but for all intents and purposes, The Girl On The Train is a tightly-wound Hitchcockian ride wrought with tension. Elements of voyeurism, self-loathing and murderous intent mix together in a volatile cocktail stirred gently by director Tate Taylor, who doesn’t dilute a single ingredient. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 6, 2016
Girl on the Train isn’t likely to haunt its shivering viewers the way the “Gone Girl” movie did. Blunt, however, makes the ride well worth taking. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 6, 2016
The most exciting contribution to The Girl on the Train is that of Wilson. It’s exciting because it shows that it’s possible, despite the odds, for a distinctive screenwriter to express herself consistently and dominate a film. And it’s exciting because this is a unique voice, and very much a woman’s voice, that our cinema needs. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJane HendersonOct 6, 2016
A taut psychological thriller, just as tense for those who already know its conclusion. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 5, 2016
That's Emily Blunt, and she is perfection, playing the hell out of this blackout drunk and adding a touch of welcome empathy. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 5, 2016
A tricky thriller whose tricks are less important than its riveting leading lady. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 5, 2016
The Girl on the Train is a preposterous movie but not an unenjoyable one. If that sounds like faint praise, well, it is and it isn’t. There’s always something to be said for an entertainment that sustains its nuttiness all the way to its twisty finish. Read full review
70
VarietyOwen GleibermanOct 3, 2016
As a big-screen thriller, The Girl on a Train is just so-so, but taken as 112 minutes of upscale psychodramatic confessional bad-behavior porn, it generates a voyeuristic zing that’s sure to carry audiences along. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniOct 6, 2016
With its female heroines and its uncertain, constantly shifting view of reality, The Girl on the Train is a bit like a cubist, feminist episode of "Law & Order." But not much more. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanOct 6, 2016
“Train” makes its strongest impact in Blunt’s hands. Her vulnerability brings pathos to every scene she enters, making you wish the whole film could have been told through Rachel’s bleary eyes – and set in England, where she belongs. But it’s a pleasure to see her anywhere. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 6, 2016
As a B-movie whodunnit designed for fast consumption by popcorn munching crowds of inattentive viewers, it’s solidly entertaining. But as a complex, Hitchcockian (as in the obvious inspiration, Rear Window) thriller, it misses by a wide margin. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 6, 2016
If only the movie had the courage to be as gonzo as it wants to be! Read full review
60
SlateKaty WaldmanOct 6, 2016
The movie isn’t perfect. I’m not even sure if it’s good. For one thing, it can feel reductively boilerplate in its treatment of it-girl Megan. Read full review
60
Total FilmJames MottramOct 3, 2016
Guilty of being slavishly loyal, Taylor’s film never quite translates into the cinematic equivalent of Hawkins’ page-turner. Blunt, though, is excellent. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyOct 3, 2016
It’s as if the book has been given a full-body massage en route to the screen, teasing away some of the spinal kinks that actually made it interesting. Read full review
60
CineVueMatthew AndersonOct 3, 2016
The Girl on the Train engages more than it rivets and brings goosebumps to skin more than chilling to the bone. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeOct 3, 2016
Like a fridge whose door’s been left open overnight, the film doesn’t feel chilly enough. It’s not terrible, but fans of the book may well be disappointed. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyOct 5, 2016
Taylor’s direction is cosmetic, focused on well-groomed and well-dressed actors, spotless interiors, and the arty, textured camerawork supplied by cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, whose gifts are both self-evident and sort of wasted here. It’s artificial without a hint of intentional façade: No home looks lived in and no conversation feels like it could have occurred outside of a laboratory environment. Read full review
58
The Film StageDan MeccaOct 4, 2016
Taylor’s unremarkable thriller is not one that demands to be seen in theaters, but will undoubtedly be seen and enjoyed in that rainy Sunday afternoon kind of way. There’s some comfort in that. Read full review
50
MTV NewsAmy NicholsonOct 9, 2016
The film is polite when it should be wicked — it’s melodrama that thinks it’s saving lives, like it drank too much chardonnay and convinced itself that since Gone Girl almost got an Oscar, maybe it can, too. That tonal muck prevents the film from going in any direction. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 7, 2016
A central dictum of any mystery thriller is this: Make your protagonists, especially your villains, worth caring about. The Girl on the Train, directed by Tate Taylor from a script by Erin Cressida Wilson, falls down on the job. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 6, 2016
When we-know-who finally gets what's coming, The Girl on the Train briefly reaches its campy feminist potential, after two hours of taking a transparent mystery too seriously. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorOct 6, 2016
Whatever the locomotive power of the novel, this film adaptation only limps into the station. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 6, 2016
It is a somber slog through the lives of one miserable wretch after another. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithOct 6, 2016
Lacking either the narrative shiftiness or the trashy thrills of “Gone Girl,” this one is the kind of flick few will watch twice: It has about as many twists and turns as an L. The third act of a movie shouldn’t make you feel as though the first two acts were a waste of time. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonOct 6, 2016
The film never quite succeeds, simply because the book’s core virtues do not lend themselves to cinema. Read full review
50
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthOct 6, 2016
Keeping things on the right side of watchable are the performances, none of which are particularly revelatory, but all of them serving the territory their role in the story requires. Blunt and Bennett both rise above the pack, but even so, the screenplay doesn’t give them dimension until almost too late. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 6, 2016
For one thing, and it's a big thing, it's filmed all wrong. Director Taylor and cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen favor handheld, Rachel's-eye-view close-ups, by the woozy hundreds. The toggling editing rhythms get to be a bit of a chore. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 5, 2016
It’s shiny trash that begins with promise but quickly gets tripped up by its own screenplay and grows increasingly ludicrous and melodramatic, to the point where I was barely able to suppress a chuckle at some of the final scenes. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMichael NordineOct 4, 2016
The Girl on the Train, though an enjoyable enough ride, goes idle once it slows down long enough for you to take in the full view of things. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 3, 2016
The Girl on the Train is less a thriller than a morality tale reminding us never to make snap judgments. No matter how dreadfully some characters behave, we’re not allowed to dislike anyone for long. That kind of catharsis isn’t allowed. Read full review
42
ConsequenceAllison ShoemakerOct 6, 2016
The film’s flaws aside (those will come later), Blunt’s performance is a hell of a thing, wholly lacking in vanity and brimming with honest, ugly feeling. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony LaneOct 10, 2016
Does it matter that the plot is so full of holes that you could use it to drain spaghetti? Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 7, 2016
A filmmaker has a feel for this kind of storytelling or doesn’t, and the people behind The Girl on the Train don’t. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesOct 5, 2016
It’s a tedious watch, inferior in every way to David Fincher’s slick, grinningly grim "Gone Girl." Any chance for lightning striking twice is going, going, gone. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczOct 5, 2016
Director Tate Taylor, who neatly wove together women’s stories in “The Help,” is out of his depth with a thriller. He fills the screen with endless close-ups but not a lick of tension. Read full review
40
EmpireJonathan PileOct 3, 2016
It's the thriller aspect that most lets the film down, failing to truly engage or offer enough plausible red herrings to send your mind whirring through different theories as to what could have happened. The twists rarely, if ever, have the impact that were intended. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyOct 3, 2016
The puzzle of how the various personal and narrative pieces will eventually fit together exerts a smidgen of interest, but the characters are so dour and un-dimensional as to invite no curiosity about them. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 3, 2016
The complicated web of narrator-switches, flashbacks and POV-shifts seems clotted and Emily Blunt – usually so witty and stylish – is landed with a whingy, relentlessly weepy role in which her nose hardly ever resumes its natural colour. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireOct 6, 2016
It’s just a flat and suspense-free tale of pretty people in peril. Read full review
38
USA TodayBrian TruittOct 5, 2016
The major whodunit here is who made a best-selling thriller so darn boring. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayOct 4, 2016
It forgoes its promise of twisty adult thrills in favor of a grimly deadpan lecture about messy truths and false perceptions. Read full review
37
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 6, 2016
Even viewers who are mildly diverted by the whodunit angle are unlikely to find themselves emotionally engaged in the outcome. Read full review
33
IndieWireDavid EhrlichOct 3, 2016
No matter how basic Hawkins’ book might be in comparison to some of the ones that came before it, it’s hard to argue that it didn’t deserve better than this, that any story so smartly attuned to the need for women to hear themselves and each other should be reduced to such flavorless swill. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOct 6, 2016
The empathy that Taylor summoned so effortlessly in his previous films feels strained and unpersuasive here, and moments that should be lacerating...are overplayed to ghastly effect. Read full review
30
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneyOct 5, 2016
Taylor’s film lacks the suspense required of a thriller. It’s a cheap exploitation of the horrors of alcoholism, depression, and domestic abuse that thinks it’s much smarter and artsier than it is. Read full review
30
Screen DailyTim GriersonOct 4, 2016
Flying off the rails at an alarming speed, The Girl On The Train fails as a compelling character study, struggles to satisfy as a psychological thriller and ultimately settles as an overheated potboiler that doesn’t have the courage to go full camp. Read full review
30
TheWrapRobert AbeleOct 3, 2016
The overall mood created by the crummy, pinched visuals and logic-strained rhythm is of something scanned and discarded, like a tabloid article or a Lifetime movie. Read full review
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