51 Questions I Had While Watching The Girl on the Train

I knew nothing about Netflix’s The Girl on the Train as I sat down to watch it. Not even that Ribhu Dasgupta’s film was an adaptation of the film of the same starring Emily Blunt from 2016, which itself an adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ book from 2015! All I remembered about the previous adaptation was that it wasn’t quite met with thunderous praise upon release. Nevertheless, I had an open mind for this version.

That didn’t last long. The film jarringly switched genres and wasted time on so many narrative dead ends that I started asking myself questions. Here’s 51 questions that illustrate the emotional rollercoaster I found myself on as I watched The Girl on the Train.

Spoilers for the film from here on… buy the ticket, take the ride…

1. Ooh intriguing opening. Who are these people running in the woods? Did one of them get murdered? Is this going to be an exciting mystery?
2. A Bollywood musical number? Is this a flash mob?
3. Is this a meet cute between the bridesmaid and the best man? Is this still the same movie? Is it a rom-com now?
4. Oh, is this set in London?
5. Why is that Jeep following Mira (Parineeti Chopra)? Wait, is this a crime drama again? What the hell is going on?

6. Wait, is this a legal drama now!?
7. How exactly does Joy Augustine help with the court case if ballistics already tied the murder weapon to Jimmy Bagga?
8. Why did the villains in the Jeep wait 6 months, just enough time for Mira to get heavily pregnant, before enacting their threatened “consequences?”
9. How has all of this happened only 13 minutes in!?
10. Mira has anterograde amnesia now? Just like Lenny from Memento? So she can’t make any new new long term memories? Why does the film never show this impacting her life? Will this have any impact on the story? (Spoilers: It won’t!).

11. “2 days after Nusrat goes missing.” Who the fuck is Nusrat?
12. Are we back to being a detective drama again?
13. “1 week before Nusrat goes missing.” When!? Why is this important? 
14. How did Mira manage to get her shit together to go to a job interview but crumbled at the merest probing of what she’s been doing for the past year? Has she never Googled “how to prepare for an interview?”
15. How could Mira even remember she has an interview if she has anterograde amnesia!?
16. Why does this tense drama have another big musical number in a club?
17. Why does the cop (Kirti Kulhari) seem to go out of her way to antagonize her interviewees? Where is the “Good Cop” to her “Bad Cop?”
18. Why didn’t Anand (Shamaun Ahmed) file a missing persons report for his wife, Nusrat (Aditi Rao Hydari), apart to provide a red herring for the cops and the audience?
19. Why does Mira think that screaming “I’m not losing it” at the top of her lungs while trashing a bathroom, proves she is not “losing it?”
20. Are cops in the U.K. allowed to just go around slapping people in the face!?

21. Doesn’t doctor-patient confidentiality apply between a psychiatrist and their patient? Even after death?
22. WHO WOULD ALLOW THEIR PSYCHIATRIST TO RECORD THEIR THERAPY SESSIONS!? HOW WOULD A PSYCHIATRIST EVEN BE ALLOWED TO SHARE THOSE VIDEOS WITH THE COPS!?
23. Why does the train announcer lady keep pronouncing Greenwich (pronounced GREN-itch) as Green‑WICH?
24. Who told Parineeti Chopra that acting drunk involves rubbing your nose all the time? Is Mira supposed to be doing coke as well?
25. Are there fireworks just to act as a trigger for Mira later? (Spoiler: Yes!)

26. THE COPS FOUND HER CITIZEN CARD AT THE SCENE OF A MURDER! HOW IS THIS NOT AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE!?
27. How do the cops know Mira is a drunk before they even interview her?
28. How is Mira paying for all her alcohol and accommodation if she hasn’t worked for a year? In this economy!?
29. What support group is this? People with memory problems or Alcoholics Anonymous? Apart from her drunk blackouts, the film doesn’t show Mira suffering from anterograde amnesia at all. Did the filmmakers chicken out on having a permanently pissed protagonist and added the anterograde amnesia?
30. Why would the cops interview a suspect for 30 minutes in the middle of the street when they have more than enough evidence to justify taking them to the station for questioning? (You know, where they could record them lying.)

31. Apart from the night of the murder, what else does Mira have trouble remembering? What is the part of her past that she says has gone missing?
32. How on earth did Mira manage to get in touch with Anand (Shamaun Ahmed)?!
33. Why doesn’t Mira have doctor patient confidentiality with her memory doctor!?
34. Why didn’t Mira delete the video of her ranting on her phone about killing Nusrat the moment she sobered up!?!?
35. Why does this movie keep bringing up Mira’s inability to make new memories but keeps showing her carrying on as if everything is normal? The only memory holes in her life are the result of getting blackout drunk! Do *I* suffer from anterograde amnesia? Did the film show these moments but *I* forgot?

36. Why is that guy just standing in that field with those horses? is he waiting for the plot to arrive?
37. Why is the horse guy STILL standing there ages later when Mira returns?
38. Have the filmmakers forgotten that they’ve shown Mira being a violent drunken nutter, even when she wasn’t being gaslit by Shekhar (Avinash Tiwary)? Do they suffer from anterograde amnesia?
39. Where is Mira hiding out? Who’s house is this?
40. Why does Mira THROW the phone that has evidence that can be used to exonerate her across the room?

41. Why does Mira text the guy who’s blackmailing her from the phone of his last victim!!? Why doesn’t she use her burner phone!?
42. Why does Shekhar say Mira is probably going to forget this all by tomorrow when HER ONLY MEMORY PROBLEMS HAVE CONSISTENTLY BEEN SHOWN TO BE THE RESULT OF ALCOHOL ABUSE!
43. Why is my heart racing like that?
44. Why does Mira start crumpling photos that could also exonerate her!?
45. Who wrote the bit about Shekhar saving Nusrat’s number under Mira’s name, because that is the smartest thing anyone involved in this movie has done.

46. Why did Nusrat think she could threaten Shekhar with going to jail for their relationship, when there was so much evidence they were together willingly (as was discovered by Mira!)?
47. Why do we need to see flashbacks to the all the Jeep’s crimes!? We saw all those scenes, it’s a pretty distinctive vehicle!
48. Are the rest of the criminal justice system just going to forget that Mira ran from the police?
49. What happened with Mira’s Anterograde amnesia? Did it clear up by itself? Or did the movie just forget?!?!?
50. Why is the music in every scene so melodramatic? How are we supposed to know what’s important if the music is SO DRAMATIC all the time?
51. How can I get the time I spent watching this movie back?

The 2021 adaptation of The Girl on the Train is now streaming on Netflix.