The Girl on the Train (2016)

and the Husband Who Told Her What She'd Done

A thriller about a woman whose ex-husband filled her blackouts with a story in which she was always to blame. What it shows about manufactured confusion, a drinking history used as ammunition, "an overactive imagination," the stranger who told her the truth, and two women who finally compared notes.

The Girl on the Train (2016). Directed by Tate Taylor, written by Erin Cressida Wilson from Paula Hawkins’s novel. Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson, Justin Theroux as Tom Watson, Rebecca Ferguson as Anna Watson, Haley Bennett as Megan Hipwell, Luke Evans as Scott Hipwell, Allison Janney as Detective Riley, and Lisa Kudrow as Martha.

“My husband... he used to tell me what I’d done the night before. And I learned when you wake up like that, you just say you’re sorry.”

Rachel Watson.

A note before you read. This page discusses a film with a murder, a husband’s violence toward his wife, a woman’s drinking and blackouts, and the long-ago death of a baby. Nothing is described in detail. If someone is hurting you, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. If drinking is part of it, the SAMHSA National Helpline is 1-800-662-4357, free and confidential, any hour. Every number is on the Resources page.

This page belongs to On Screen. It shows two patterns no other film in the series reaches. A husband uses his wife’s drinking to rewrite what happened, and fills her blackouts with a story in which she is always the one to blame. It’s also a thriller, and a hard one. This page reads it for the marriage at its center.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Rachel’s drinking is real, and the film doesn’t pretend otherwise. That’s exactly why it matters: the pattern works best on someone who already doubts herself.

The Story

Rachel Watson has lost her job and her marriage. She is an alcoholic, and every day she rides the train into New York for no reason, past the house where her ex-husband, Tom, now lives with his new wife, Anna, and their baby. Two doors down live Scott and Megan Hipwell. Megan used to be Anna’s nanny.

During the marriage, Rachel was depressed about not being able to have children, and she began to drink. She had blackouts. Tom has told her what she did in them: at a barbecue at his boss’s house, he says, she made a drunken scene that got him fired. She still calls Tom and Anna when she’s drunk, and barely remembers it.

One afternoon, Rachel sees Megan kissing a stranger. She goes to confront her, and wakes up hours later in her own bed, covered in blood. Megan is reported missing, and the police question Rachel. Megan is found dead.

On the train, Rachel meets Martha, the wife of Tom’s old boss, and apologizes for the barbecue. Martha tells her she did nothing like what Tom described: she got sick and took a nap in the guest room. Tom was fired for sexually harassing his co-workers.

Rachel realizes Tom planted false memories during her blackouts, and that the injuries she woke up with came from him. Sober, she remembers the day Megan disappeared: she saw Megan with Tom, and he hit Rachel when she confronted them. Tom killed Megan.

Rachel warns Anna. When the two women confront Tom, he attacks Rachel, and the women kill him in self-defense. Anna admits that Rachel was right about everything. In the last scene, Rachel sits on the other side of the train.

What It Gets Right

It takes a woman almost every film would treat as unreliable, a drunk ex-wife who calls too much, and shows that she was right. It shows how a story told to you, over and over, can become your memory. And it ends with the two women Tom pitted against each other, his ex-wife and his new wife, standing together.

What It Teaches

1. “He used to tell me what I’d done the night before”

Rachel describes her mornings: “My husband... he used to tell me what I’d done the night before. And I learned when you wake up like that, you just say you’re sorry. You just say you’re sorry for what you did, and you’re sorry for who you are, and you’re never gonna do it again.”

The Decoder’s Card 38, The “Huh?” Gaslight Loop, is “Manufactured confusion.” Tom didn’t need to argue with her memory. She had none. He only had to fill the gap with a version in which she was always to blame, and let her apologize for it.

2. Your drinking, used as ammunition

Rachel’s drinking was real. What Tom did with it was something else. He used it to explain away his own firing, to account for her bruises, and to make sure that whatever she said, no one, including Rachel, would believe her.

The Decoder’s Card S-4, Weaponizing Your Use, is “Your substance history becomes ammunition.” If you have a history with drinking or drugs, someone can use it to make every memory you have suspect, and every complaint you make sound like a symptom. Your history is real. So is what happened to you. Both can be true.

3. “An overactive imagination”

The film’s first line is Rachel’s: “My husband used to tell me I have an overactive imagination.”

The Decoder’s Card 16, The Gaslight Loop, is “Attacking your perception of reality.” It often starts small, with a phrase like that, said fondly. By the end of the marriage it’s a whole account of who she is.

4. Martha

The turn in the film isn’t a clue or a confession. It’s a woman on a train telling Rachel the truth: she didn’t do it. She got sick, and slept, and Tom lied.

When someone has rewritten your history, one outside voice can break the spell. If you aren’t sure what happened, it’s worth asking someone who was there and has no stake in the story. And if you’re that someone, it’s worth telling.

5. Two women, standing together

Tom’s story kept his wives on opposite sides: Rachel was the drunk ex, Anna the wife who’d won. In the end it’s Rachel who warns Anna, and Anna who admits that Rachel was right about everything.

A man like Tom depends on the women in his life never comparing notes. When they do, the story falls apart.

Her Mind, Used Against Her, Side by Side

	Rosemary’s Baby (1968)	When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)	The Girl on the Train (2016)
What she was told	That she’d imagined it	That he could fix it	What she’d done the night before
Her drinking	A drink that tasted wrong	Real, and she got sober	Real, and used against her
Who saw it	Her friends, but no one stopped it	Herself, in a program	A woman who told her the truth

Three films about a woman whose own mind was used against her. The newest is the only one in which she is believed.

If You Grew Up on This

This film came out when most readers were adults, and some watched it with a history of their own. Nothing on this page asks you to see Rachel as a hero or a victim. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Has someone told you what you did, at a time you couldn’t remember? Did you check?
Has a part of your history, drinking, illness, a hard year, been used to make you doubt yourself?
Did you learn to say sorry first, before you knew what for?
Who could you ask, someone with no stake in the story, what really happened?
Is there a woman you were set against, whose notes you never compared with yours?

Rachel learned to say she was sorry. Then she learned what really happened.

You’re the audience now. Your memory counts, too.