Does this big screen adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s best selling thriller starring Emily Blunt impress critics?
The Guardian: ** “Fans of Paula Hawkins’s thriller might find themselves sticking to the book.”
The Daily Mail: *** “In other words, it’s a contrived and complex film with nobody to root for.”
Variety: “It delivers a sense of hidden dark lives, which is why it should have no trouble connecting at the box office.”
Evening Standard: *** “it may be enjoyed most by the few who do not know the book, or perhaps read it drunk and forgot it completely, while its fans may be going for something more like ritual re-enactment purposes.”
Consequence of Sound: “if they’d embraced black comedy somewhere along the way, The Girl on the Train might even be brilliant. But what we have instead is this mess.”
New York Times: “The Girl on the Train is a preposterous movie but not an unenjoyable one.”
NME:**** “the film is driven by Blunt’s powerful central performance.”
ETOnline: “Girl on the Train is the reason we even bother to keep movie-fying books — because sometimes the movie is better.”
IGN:”Alternately overly convoluted and predictable, the film relies too heavily on its twists while offering little in the way of character development.”
Empire: ** “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 Hollywood Reporter: “The other suspense rates as little more than curiosity, as to whether or not Rachel will ever pull herself together and pour the hooch down the drain instead of down her throat.”
Rolling Stone: *** ” Blunt digs into the role like an actress possessed – there’s not an ounce of vanity here, and she keeps her real English accent to portray a Brit transplant on the ropes in New York.”
Vanity Fair: “It’s just thatThe Girl on the Train—which could be content to be merely grim entertainment—is trying to be something more, with something to say.”
The Girl on the Train is in cinemas now.