Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a thriller
film from 2016, titled The Girl on a Train. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
This is a story about three women whose lives are interconnected in a terrifying circle of lies,
abuse, and death. Rachel has turned into a sad drunk that lost her job over a year ago
because of her drinking problem. Now, she just rides the same train every day, looking at the
houses along its route, imagining what the life of one of the women that live in them is like.
That woman is Megan. Rachel sees her life as an absolute fantasy in which Megan is a
perfect woman in a perfect relationship and perfectly in love with her husband.
This is not the case, however, as we will find out in the course of the movie.
Megan is a very troubled young woman with a difficult past and a husband,
Scott, who's a little bit too jealous when it comes to her contact with others. But he isn't her
only problem. She used to be a successful gallery director, but now Megan is reduced to work as a
nanny for one of her neighbors, Anna. Megan is stuck in a situation she despises, infinitely sad
about what her life has turned into, being forced into becoming a housewife and a mother. Anna is
the image of that woman Megan wants to avoid. She is the current wife of Rachel's ex-husband with
whom she has a baby. Rachel keeps coming to their house that she can see on her train ride as well,
with one time even sneaking inside and taking their baby. She keeps calling both the house and
Tom, her ex, constantly. In the present, the three women live completely different lives,
but all surrounding the same axis in that boring little town outside of New York.
Rachel lives with her friend Cathy who's worried about her drinking and obsessing
over her ex-husband and his new wife and baby. She tells Rachel to stop calling them while she
apologizes to Cathy for not being able to pull herself together and move out of her place for
the past two years. The only thing on her mind is her past with Tom and their difficulty having
a baby which she really wanted. The next day, Rachel goes back to her train, getting scolding
looks from her fellow passengers for being drunk and looking at Megan's house when she sees her
embracing and kissing another man that's not her husband. He is actually Megan's shrink, Dr. Abdic,
and what Rachel doesn't know about Megan, makes her assume that she's having an affair with him
and has her entire fantasy about her shattered in an instant, thinking that she's throwing her
beautiful life away. Rachel gets drunker and more upset over the course of the day, correlating
Megan's supposed affair with the one her ex Tom had with Anna before they even got divorced.
She remembers his emails to her when she talks to a random woman she gets drunk with at a bar.
Later, she records herself and her newfound friend cursing Anna out and then explaining how angry
she feels about Megan cheating on her husband, making her want to go to her house and confront
her about it. Rachel eve explains in vivid detail how she would beat her up if she went to see her.
On the train again, Rachel sees Megan's house and exits the crowded train in a drunken state,
registering one of the passengers she knows from it, thinking he's following her to the
tunnel where she sees someone. She calls out to the woman, calling her a whore.
Rachel wakes up the next day in a terrible state after the previous drunken 24 hours. Her room is
an absolute and disguising mess and to make it even worse she has blood all over her hands,
face, and clothes. She can hear her ex's voice in her head, being mean to her and saying she
should leave him and Anna alone. Rachel washes up and tries to remember the previous day by
looking at the recording she made on her phone and scrambled images pop up into her mind from
Megan in the tunnel and in her house as well as the passenger from the train. She boards
the train again and recalls herself hurting Megan the way she explained doing it on her recording.
Rachel's memories are in absolute chaos and she tries drawing them so she can put them together.
Fearing what might have happened, she goes to an AA meeting and confesses that this is just
her first day, sharing that when she was married she had her husband to tell her about the previous
nights and now no one can help her remember. Going back on the train she sees Martha, the wife of
Tom's old boss. Rachel remembers herself at one of Martha's parties years ago when she made a scene,
embarrassing her husband and probably costing him his job, or at least that's what he tells her
to remember. Her memories flood her mind, from the time that she was still married to Tom and
very violent toward him. Rachel comes back home to Detective Riley and her partner waiting at Cathy's
place for her. Riley asks her where she was that Friday night and Rachel tells her that she wanted
to visit Tom, but decided that it was a bad idea and got back home around 11. The detective notices
a 5-hour gap between the time she says she got off the train and the time she got home.
She shows Rachel a photo of Megan and tells her that she's gone missing on that Friday. Rachel
says that she doesn't know Megan nor has she seen her. When the detectives leave, Cathy confronts
her about the fact that she hasn't had a job for a long time and she didn't tell her, but Rachel
tells her not to worry about the rent because she still has alimony money. The two of them
argue about her getting so drunk that she lost her memory when Cathy gets it in her mind that when
people blackout as she did, they are capable of terrible things. Suddenly, Rachel recalls
seeing Megan with her shrink and runs off to tell the detective. Riley, however, isn't impressed
that Rachel now somehow knows Megan and she just happened to be at the right place to witness her
having an affair. Then, she tells Rachel that they have eyewitnesses stating that a drunk woman was
seen in the vicinity of Megan's house that night and Riley suspects if Rachel might have mistaken
Megan for Anna because she also knows about the previous incidents she has had with her.
In a flashback from some months earlier, we see Megan in a therapy session with Dr. Abdic.
She's telling him that Scott is possessive and likes to own her,
but in an interesting way of presenting their dialogue, the filmmakers will have us doubt
if anything Megan is saying is true, just how we doubt if anything Rachel is remembering is real.
The doctor tells her that what Scott is doing to her is a form of emotional abuse,
but Megan seems to have accepted it as a normal state of affairs.
She, suddenly, confesses to her doctor that she has feelings for him that are probably misplaced.
Rachel, fearing what might have happened to Megan and abruptly changing her mind about her,
idolizes her now that she's missing. She gets the idea to talk to her husband and lies to him
that she's Megan's friend to get through the doors and get his trust. Rachel tells him that she saw
Megan kissing someone that day from the train and Scott gets upset so he asks what he looks like.
He offers Rachel a drink and she reluctantly takes it, knowing it would get her right back
where she started. Before she leaves, Scott asks her if she would recognize the man if she saw
him and shows her a picture of Dr. Abdic. Rachel can't tell at first, but as she thinks about it,
she says that he was the man on the porch with Megan that Friday.
In another flashback about Megan, we see her sleeping with someone, but with no clue who he
actually is. Then, she has another session with her shrink, talking to him about the subject
of getting a baby, then trying to avoid talking about it by coming on to him. Back in the present,
Dr. Abdic is getting arrested by the police and Rachel begins to feel better, finding purpose in
the search for Megan. However, Scott calls her and tells her that the shrink was released after he
pointed a finger at him, sharing with the police everything that Megan had told him about her
husband. The police are suspecting him now and he thinks that they might have every reason to
do so considering how he behaved when she went missing. When Rachel leaves the house she runs
into Tom and Anna and has another misinterpreted flashback when he sees her and asks her to leave.
Rachel remembers Anna being in the tunnel and hitting her, but Tom doesn't want to go in it.
He tells her that they both know what she is capable of, hinting at her supposed violent
outbursts, and gets very angry when Rachel mentions Megan. Sometime later, Rachel goes
to see Dr. Abdic under the guise of looking for therapy herself. She tells him about her
blackouts and confesses that when someone reminds her about what she has done during them, she feels
removed and disconnected from what happened as if it wasn't her that did those things.
Without the intention of doing so, Rachel opens up to the doctor about how her alcoholism began and
finally faces her own truth, that she's afraid of what she might have done. Meanwhile, Anna
is also suspicious of Rachel and her intentions towards them so she speaks to the police about it.
Detective Riley, though, doesn't see it the same way as she does and in return creates
suspicion in Anna about Tom, prompting her to do little investigations on her own.
One night, Rachel gets a visit from Scott. He tells Rachel that Megan was pregnant and told
her doctor instead of him. Scott falls asleep at Rachel's house and it becomes clear that she
might have developed feelings for him or misplaced whatever she thought Megan was feeling like her
own. In a flashback, we see the moment that Megan tells Dr. Abdic about her pregnancy, but we also
finally find out why she was so apprehensive about having a child. She tells him that when she was
17 years old she gave birth to a little girl and loved being a mother because she loved her child.
Unfortunately, the child drowned in an awful accident that scared Megan forever. She and her
boyfriend buried the baby in front of their house then he left her with no warning. Rachel goes back
to the shrink, probably more for herself than for Megan, and tells him about the incident with Tom's
and Anna's baby. She was drunk when she got inside their house and when she saw the child she just
wanted to hold it for a moment to see what it felt like because she couldn't have one of her own.
Anna, however, saw a different version of the same story and believed that she would
hurt the baby, even though Rachel never would. Sometime later, Megan's partially decomposed
body is found in the woods. The investigation is no longer a missing person's case, but a homicide.
At this point, we get to Anna's story. She remembers Tom from before they got married
and they were having an affair while he was still with Rachel. That thought gets her thinking about
Rachel's violent tendencies and suspicious about the possibility of her killing Megan.
Tom reassures her that even though Rachel might be a sad person, that she's completely harmless.
Meanwhile, Rachel comes back home to find Scott at her place, drinking and ready to confront
her about something. He offers her a beer, but she refuses. Scott goes on to tell Rachel that Megan's
baby wasn't his, nor Dr. Abdic's, and asks her if she knew about a third man, but Rachel naturally
doesn't know. Scott suspects as much because the detectives had told him that she didn't even know
Megan at all. He's rightfully upset for her lying to him so she tries to explain that the reason
for that was only to help in the investigation. Scott attacks her, then storms out of her place
and Rachel goes to the police to report him. When she gets there, detective Riley happens
upon her and questions her about everything instead, confronting her about all of her lies
and misdirection. Riley still suspects Rachel so she keeps asking her what happened that night.
Rachel still doesn't know so she runs out there before she can say anything else.
In a flashback with Megan on the day that she died, we see the real version of events that took
place on her porch with her shrink. He was simply comforting her that she and her baby will be fine.
In the present, Rachel goes back to drinking when she sees the passenger from the train in the bar
that she's in and asks him why he was following her that Friday because she saw him in the tunnel.
The man tells her that he saw her fall and wanted to help her,
but she told him to leave her alone. No matter how much she pushes for answers he doesn't know
anything else about what happened that night. The conversation with him sends Rachel back on
the spiral of doubting herself and believing that she might be capable of killing someone,
capable of killing Megan. She listens to the recording again and decides to go to the police,
leaving a note for Cathy with all her packed-up possessions. When she enters the train, however,
she sees Martha again. The woman is happy to see her, not how she would expect it to be.
Though, Rachel still apologizes to her for acting the way she did all those years ago.
Martha doesn't understand what Rachel is saying and tells her the real story of what happened that
night. Unlike the story Tom had fed her the next day, Martha explains that during her party Rachel
was drunk, but far from violent. In fact, she even took a little nap in her room. Furthermore,
Martha tells her that Tom was fired from his job not because she embarrassed him, but because he
slept with everyone in the office. Martha even tells Rachel how sorry she felt for her being
married to him. Rachel suddenly remembers it all, that Tom was the violent and abusive spouse taking
his rage out on his alcoholic wife and making her feel even worse about herself. That night,
Anna continues to investigate Tom's things when she finds a cell phone in his bag and charges it,
only to find out that it's a woman's phone. She reads his texts to her which make it apparent that
he was having an affair. When he comes back home, Anna pretends that nothing is going on with her.
That night, Anna finds out that the phone actually belonged to Megan and she throws it
over the fence out of panic when she hears him coming, Meanwhile, Rachel's memories keep
coming back to her and she remembers seeing Megan in the tunnel the day she died, but the
whole sequence of events is still fuzzy so she goes back to the place where it all took place.
Suddenly, Rachel remembers everything from seeing Megan there to the man that picked her up. In her
flashback, Tom comes over to her, pulls her aside, and beats her up, then runs back to Megan and they
drive off together. She even remembers being mean to the passenger that was trying to help her.
Rachel has puzzled it all together, so she goes back to Tom's and Anna's house the next day.
Anna is playing with her baby in the yard and freaks out when she sees her because Tom has also
been feeding her the lie that Rachel is violent throughout the years. She tells Rachel to go away,
but she insists that Anna needs to leave because Tom is dangerous and probably killed Megan.
Anna doesn't want to leave him and keeps resisting what Rachel is trying to tell her.
Tom appears and she confronts him about Megan so he pulls her inside where the argument continues.
Listening to Rachel recall her memory of the night, Anna tells them that she found
Megan's phone. She asks Tom about the affair and he confirms it. When Rachel sees how Tom
is treating Anna and the baby she tries to call the police but he stops her and drags her to the
kitchen intending to get her to drink. Rachel refuses, though he pours her one nonetheless.
She keeps talking about how he treated her and made her feel,
finally getting it into Anna's mind. When Rachel doesn't drink the vodka, he throws it in her face
then hits he over the head, knocking her out. At the very end, we see what transpired to
Megan after she got in the car with Tom. They go to the woods together, where they usually
had their meetings and she tells him that she's pregnant and unsure if the baby is his or not.
Megan is actually happy about it after everything that she's been through, but Tom tells her to get
rid of it. However, she's not interested in doing anything like that and argues with him.
Tom pushes her on a rock then kicks her and when he pulls her body to hide it, Megan wakes up,
so he ultimately kills her with a rock. Back in the present, Tom is trying to manipulate
Rachel into thinking that it's her fault Megan died, but she knows better than to fall for his
words and tries to run. He grabs her and tries to strangle her under Anna's eyes. Rachel knocks him
over and manages to escape, but when he follows her out this time, she stabs him with a wine
opener. Anna comes out of the house and finishes the job Rachel had started. They both killed him
together. Later in the police station, Rachel and Anna give detective Riley the same story. Anna
says that Rachel was right about everything. In the final image of the film, Rachel visits Megan's
grave then rides the train again, sitting in a different car and looking in the other direction.