After playing in Indonesia for over a week, I finally got the chance to see this movie yesterday. It was playing only in 2 cinema chains, so it was a bit challenging to search for cinemas that are still playing. Even in Cinemaxx, it is currently playing only in 1 theater in Plaza Semanggi and just 1 show per day. Anyway, my wife who was having an unusually free Saturday wanted to accompany me for the movie. So off we go and see it at 1.45PM. Let's find out more on the movie now. I will try my best to keep the story line as brief as possible and avoid any chance of spoiler. However, if you are worried of such risk, and just want to know my views of the movie, then you can just go direct to my conclusion below the End of Brief Story Line.
Brief Story Line
Movie started with the introduction of Rachel (Emily Blunt - Edge of Tomorrow, The Huntsman: Winter's War etc) who always commute from her house to her workplace on daily basis. From her narrative, it was revealed that her train always passed a house lived by a young couple who seemed to lead a romantic lovely life. She even imagined many good things about the couple. It was revealed later also that she ever lived in a house 2 doors next that couple's house. During these introduction scenes, we would see that Rachel was an alcoholic and unstable woman, with highly active imagination and was having too high curiosity, especially towards this young couple.
Scene later moved to 6 months prior to the Rachel's introduction, with the introduction of Megan (Haley Bennet - The Magnficient Seven 2016 version etc) who was the young woman that Rachel always looked and imagined while she was commuting. She was married to a young man named Scott (Luke Evans - Fast & Furious 6, Dracula Untold etc) who loved her very much. Scott had been wanting to have a child for a while but Megan seemed not ready yet. Megan also was working as a baby sitter (which was supposed to increase her motherly instinct). She was taking care of Evie, the child of their neighbor named Anna.
So now we would be introduced to the 3rd main character of the main movie, Anna (played by Rebecca Ferguson - The White Queen TV series, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation etc). She was shown as a house wife who only do humanitarian work and taking care of her child. She had a loving husband named Tom (Justin Theroux - Mulholland Drive, Zoolander etc) who worked long hours and seemed not always around. Tom happened to be none other than Rachel's ex husband who left her due to various reasons which would be revealed as the story progressed.
After the introductions of the 3 main characters, the story move back and forth to show a little bit portion of Rachel, Megan and Anna with some flashbacks every now and then. During the flashback scenes, it was also revealed that Megan was seeing a psychiatrist named Dr. Abdic (Édgar Ramírez - Zero Dark Thirty, Point Break 2015 version etc) about her personal problems, including her complaint about Scott being a very controlling husband. In addition, Rachel also seemed not able to move on from her marriage as she consistently harassed Tom and Anna, including making night calls and other stuffs.
Thing started to become complicated when on 1 day during her daily train trip, Rachel saw Megan hugging and kissing another man. She was very furious with this finding, as she believed that Megan already had everything and she should not have risked her good marriage life by cheating with another man. Feeling angry, and after having too much to drink, Rachel somehow went down to the train station nearby her old neighborhood's house. However, due to her constant black out whenever she had too much too drink, she had another one of such episode. She woke up in her bedroom with her head and clothes filled with dry blood, but she really could not remember what happened. Not until she saw the news about Megan's missing.
Rachel wanted to tell this story to her room mate Cathy (Laura Prepon - That '70s Show and Orange Is The New Black TV series) but she changed her mind when Detective Riley (Allison Janney - Minions, Finding Dory etc) went to their house to interview Rachel as a person of interest, since someone saw her nearby the location on the night Megan went missing. The police was unable to decide whether Rachel had got anything to do with Megan's disappearance, though they did seemed to be suspicious.
So what actually happened to Megan? Did Rachel had anything to do with her disappearance? Could Rachel remember what really happen during her black out episode? Find all the answers by watching the movie till completion.
End of Brief Story Line
Watching this kind of psychological thriller mystery movie, you would need to be patient as the story usually would be told in a medium (or people may consider slow) pace. For the first 30 minutes or so, the main story was revolving on the introduction of the 3 main characters. But once the main mystery which is the disappearance of Megan revealed, the pace of the story increased a bit. The audience would be kept on guessing on what happened. One surprise eye opening scene that would change the whole perspective would be shown in quite a later stage. However, there was one information that made me immediately realized who the guilty party was, as that information made me think that certain people could not be guilty, using the elimination method.
But then again, watching the entire movie was really worth the wait. You got to appreciate that the mystery was indeed intriguing. I understand that this film is an adaptation to a novel by the same title written by Paula Hopkins. Now I never read the novel before, so I would not know whether the story here was loyal to its original novel writing. But from what I know based on my best friend Mr. Google, the novel was able to make us guess till the very end. So does it mean the movie then is not as amazing compared to the novel? Maybe not, coz the movie itself is quite successful in commercial term. Till the time I saw the movie and writing this review, it had earned more than 4 times its budget.
This movie certainly is more for adult. There were some domestic violence and sex scenes in the film which were cut by the Indonesian censorship, but we still could understand the main story despite those censors. The way the story told was also quite interesting, with 3 main characters introduced and combined with the flashback scenes which were done quite smoothly without making the audience confused. Based on the above, I hope you would understand that this is not the straight forward mystery movie where the mystery was told upfront in the beginning and then the story focused on investigation, interrogation of suspects, till the main villain is revealed. It is more of a complex drama movie with the main focus on Rachel's way of finding out the actual events that occurred, till the great conclusion which I believe audience would feel satisfied.
So if you are a fan of psychological thriller mystery movie and do not mind sitting through a film that had more dialogues than actions, then you should feel entertained with this one. However, if you are a fan of the usual mystery movie, I still think that as long as you keep an open mind, you can still enjoy this movie. Unless of course if you are the full action kind of movie fan, then I would not recommend you to watch this one as you will be bored and tired. The choice is yours.
Oh before I forget, the movie is playing in very limited theaters in Indonesia, so if you still want to catch this while it is still playing in cinemas, then now would be the best time, as I think by next few days, there may be no more theaters playing it.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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