8 Ways The Girl On The Train Is Just A Lazy Gone Girl

Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train is set in London, drawing from the author’s own experiences looking out of the train on the District line (presumably the imagining lives part, not finding herself entwined in a multi-couple murder arc). Curiously, the film moves it to New York.

There’s a lot of possibilities why this choice was made – it’s to appeal to an American audience, it makes English Blunt feel even more out of place, it’s cheaper – but in reality there’s only one explanation; it makes the film more like Gone Girl.

Flynn’s novel and Fincher’s film are set in Missouri, so it’s not identical to Westchester, but the towering, perfect houses are the same. What’s different is that Tate Taylor can’t quite convey the troubled lives dying to burst out from their walls are the same.

There’s a difference between English and American suburbia, with the latter typically an idyllic goal of the American Dream, but one that in modern fiction is personified as hiding dark secrets, seen in everything from Blue Velvet to Desperate Housewives. The Girl On The Train’s plot flirts with doing that, but by having it's main character just looking in it lacks any real bite.