The trouble with attempting to transmute Paula Hawkins’ dark thriller to the screen (11m copies of the book have been sold) is that too many people know its torrid twists — and literary artifice easily gets snarled up. While the director, Taylor (The Help, 2011), is no slouch, neither is he a grandmaster of the art. But as this film’s fragments cohere it becomes far more than a rerun of Gone Girl or (way back) Fatal Attraction. The messiness of its characters is deliberate; you have to let the technique sink in.The plot relies on false memories, amnesia, psychotic episodes, and reversals of time. We see these from the perspective of Rachel (Blunt). In a remarkable performance, she plays a deserted woman (or "girl") who has fallen deep into the bottle, is tormented by her former husband Tom (Theroux) and his infidelities, and is virtually living on the street. Rachel travels meaninglessly to and from her former workplace, here relocated from England to New York, and communicates hope...
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