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

Full-on, f*ck-off spoilers here – you have been warned.

So in Gone Girl it’s revealed around the mid-point that, just as everything’s closing in around Nick, that Amy is in fact not missing and is instead trying to frame her husband, shown in a vicious montage that lays her worldview bare. In The Girl On The Train it’s revealed that Tom, Rachel’s ex, lied to her about her drunken actions, then that he beat her up that night, then that he was having an affair, then, finally, that he was the one who did indeed kill Megan.

One of those is targeted and shocking, the other is muddled and dragged out, all but ensuring you’re going to guess what’s going on ten minutes before it’s revealed (and that’s if hadn’t clocked that Tom was the killer by the simple fact that he’s the only remaining key character it could be).

Gone Girl is helped a lot in that the outcome is frankly unguessable – it’s a whodunit where the victim did it – but, forgoing logic of the reveals (“you were always tired” is not a good excuse for an affair), the execution of The Girl On The Train’s is vastly lacking.