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The Girl on the Train | 2016 | R | - 8.6.9

An alcoholic divorcée (Emily Blunt) insinuates herself into the life of her abusive ex-husband (Justin Theroux), his current wife (Rebecca Ferguson), their nanny (Haley Bennett) and the nanny's husband (Luke Evans), all of whom she watches obsessively from the window of her daily commuter train. Then the nanny goes missing, and it's not clear who's a witness to murder or actually a murderer. Also with Allison Janney, Edgar Ramirez, Lisa Kudos and Laura Prepon. Directed by Tate Taylor. [1:52]

SEX/NUDITY 8 - Three scenes feature a man having sex with a woman: The first scene is in a large glass walled shower that is clouded with steam (we see back male nudity clearly and full frontal female nudity behind a cloudy glass wall) and a close-up shows his face and the camera pulls back to show a cloudier glass wall where we see the grainy image of the man thrusting while rubbing her breasts; two additional scenes show the man, clothed, thrusting (the woman who is nude from the waist down and has her face pressed into a tree and we see one bare female buttock each time).
 A brief scene features a nude woman sitting on top of a man in bed, moving up and down in intercourse (we see her bare back and upper buttocks). In a long shot through a window a shirtless man whose back we see removes a woman's blouse (she is obscured by his body) and she seems to sit on his lap and move up and down briefly before the scene ends. A man and a woman lie in bed, clothed and awake and she is facing the camera on her side and he is facing her back, lying on his side, and thrusting (we see their clothed upper bodies) while the woman does not respond and is silent and he stops. A shirtless husband (bare chest and abdomen are seen) reaches under his wife's dress and pulls down her panties, and then kisses her neck (she does not respond).
 A woman sitting on a chair in an office next to a man in a chair lifts her skirt and rubs her bare pubic area (we see the area thinly covered in pubic hair and we see her bare thighs and her low-cut top reveals cleavage); she stands and lowers to her knees, hugging the man (who's now standing) with her face at about groin level and she sucks on one of his fingers until he pulls her to her feet and pushes her away as she tries to kiss him; she shouts and slaps him as the scene ends. A man slams a woman face-first into a tree and grabs her pants waistband to remove them and she refuses. A married woman stands outside on a deck wearing a thin robe, a sports bra and panties about six times (we see cleavage, bare abdomen and her panties); in one of the scenes, she kisses a man and hugs him and in a later scene, she stands wearing pajamas and a robe and hugs a man who kisses her on the cheek. A man and a woman kiss briefly in four scenes.
 A woman lying in a bathtub slides over the side of the tub, revealing full back nudity and the partial side of one breast; we later see a flashback of the scene where the woman screams, crawls across the floor, runs outside in front of her forest cabin, nude, covering her chest with her arms (we see her from the waist, up) and we see full female back nudity as the scene ends. A woman wearing a sports bra (very little cleavage is seen) and tight yoga pants works out on a type of rowing machine. A man lifts his arms and his shirt rides up to show his navel and a woman stares at his stomach.
 We hear that a man had an affair with his second wife, with whom he has an infant daughter, for six months before he divorced his first wife; in a sequence of fast flashbacks the man and the woman are kissing briefly in several rooms of his home. A man kisses a woman's neck as she is sitting on a kitchen counter and she does not respond.
 A woman tells a man, "I miss being the other woman.'" A woman tells a male therapist that she has had many ex-partners and lovers, she says that her husband keeps demanding her to become pregnant and she does not want that and that she touches herself (sexually) often. A woman tells a man that his dead wife had an affair with another man and he seems shocked. A man tells a woman that he discovered that his dead wife was pregnant but not by him. A woman tells a man that she is pregnant with his child and he says to have an abortion and get rid of it; she refuses. A phone message from a man to a woman reads, "I dreamed about kissing your inner thighs and holding your breasts." A wife discovers a phone holding a sexually suggestive message and realizes that her husband is having an affair.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - A man tells a woman to have an abortion, she pushes him and he knocks her to the ground where she hits her head on a rock; the man stomps on the woman's face twice (our view is blocked by a rock), he drags her by the feet along the ground (we see substantial blood on her face and she is still alive, screaming), he picks up a rock and slams it down three times and stuffs her body under some leaves below the frame (we see one of her hands).
 A woman argues with a man and another woman and she shouts, "Murderer!" and the man grabs her by the hair and slams her into a chair, throws vodka in her face (please see the Substance Use category for more details), and then punches her unconscious on the floor; when she awakens he grabs and chokes her, she hits him with a heavy object, runs outside, he follows, she stabs him in the throat with a corkscrew (blood spurts strongly all over his shirt and hers) and he falls to the ground on his back, twitching and a woman kneels next to him and twists the corkscrew several times until he is dead (blood is seen on her sweater).
 A drunken woman is shown in a park where a man approaches her on a narrow road, beats her, slams her into a stone wall, and punches her unconscious, bloodying her face and shoulders; she awakens the next morning with a lot of blood on her face, hands, shoulders, and shirt front. We see several flashbacks of a man grabbing a woman by the back of the head and slamming her into walls, into a chair, onto pavement, and onto a floor; he breaks a large mirror with a ball bat while shouting and it crashes into tiny pieces as the woman screams and cries (the woman's face is partially covered in blood three times). A woman has three flashbacks of approaching a woman, grabbing her by the hair, and slamming her head backwards onto tiled flooring several times until the floor is bloody. A woman slaps a man in the face several times in a couple of scenes. A woman rushes off a train, pushing people out of her way and a man follows her through a wooded area, but she escapes.
 We see a flashback scene outside a forest cabin, where a woman and a man with a baby in a blanket are about to lay the baby in a shallow grave, and the scene ends.
 A husband yells at his wife when she comes home and chases her off-screen. A woman arrives home to find a man in her apartment and he shouts and throws a beer bottle against a wall, smashing it as the woman flinches; they argue and he leaves. A woman argues loudly with a man at a bar briefly and he leaves. In a flashback, a drunken woman shouts at people at a home barbecue and slams a large tray of deviled eggs into a wall; she later apologizes, but the homeowner tells her that that memory is false and it never happened. Frequently, while drunk (please see the Substance Use category for more details), a woman harasses her ex-husband by phone and in person, but she has no memory of this; in several scenes, she is drunk, staggering and slurring her words. A psychiatrist tells a woman that her husband is abusing her emotionally. A woman says that she began drinking when she learned that she could not become pregnant, which upset her former husband; she says that she is afraid of herself. A woman tells a man that his wife hit her in the face. Police detectives escort two women to the police station and they are later released. A wife reports her husband's alcoholic ex-wife to the police.
 A woman is spying on her ex-husband and his new wife. A woman spies on a couple, obsessively fantasizing about their perfect life.
 We hear that a woman's brother and parents all died recently (no cause is given). A woman tells her therapist that she had a baby that died; she fell asleep in the bathtub with the baby on her chest and the baby slipped under the water (we do not see that). We hear a TV newscast stating that detectives found the partially decomposed body of a woman. We hear that a woman is missing. A woman visits a cemetery.

LANGUAGE 9 - About 49 F-words and its derivatives, 3 sexual references, 3 scatological terms, 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, stupid, baby factory, pathetic impotent man, whore), exclamations (I swear), 2 religious exclamations (Oh My God, God).

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman empties a full fifth of vodka into a sports water bottle and drinks it every day on a train, a vodka bottle I shown in the corner of a woman's bedroom on a table, a woman sits at a café bar in a train station three times and drinks martinis, a woman holds a glass of wine at a café, a man drinks from a glass of beer in a café scene, two men drink bottles of beer at home in a kitchen, a man gives a woman a beer bottle and she takes three drinks from it, a man pours a woman a short glass of vodka and when she refuses it he tosses the vodka into her face, a man and a woman drink from beer bottles in their backyard at night, a woman has a small bottle of vodka in her purse on a train, a plate on a kitchen counter contains half a dozen bottles of liquor, a woman pours a bottle of vodka down a drain and a drunken woman complains as she staggers and slurs her words, a woman drinks a glass of wine at home, we hear that a woman's drinking caused her to lose her job and that she frequently binges and has memory blackouts, a man at a bar tells a woman that she is always wasted (drunk), and a woman attends an AA meeting. A man blows cigarette smoke into the face of an injured woman lying on the ground as he laughs.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Emotional abuse, gaslighting, women being defined by their husbands and marriage, mental illness, alcoholism, memory blackouts, divorce, lies, obsessions, jealousy, fidelity, crime, disappearance, murder, danger, fear, mistrust, confusion, self-doubt, self-loathing, psychiatric therapy, discovery, justice.

MESSAGE - Life changes, abuse and increasing stress can lead to self-doubt.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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