The Girl On the Train, Paula Hawkins’s perfectly fine 2015 thriller, had both the privilege and misfortune of being released just months after the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Readers were hungry for more dark, page-turny novels about potential crimes between lovers, so they bought it by the truckful.
But The Girl On the Train—entertaining and well-constructed as it was—lacked the inventive darkness of Flynn’s novel. The tale of an unreliable alcoholic (played by Emily Blunt in the movie) who may or may not know the truth about a missing woman was fun to read, but didn’t stick with me in that discomforting way Gone Girl had.
Fortunately (for everyone involved), the upcoming big-screen adaptation is looking just great. Its second trailer—set to an eerie remix of Kanye West’s “Heartless”—was released Monday and promises plenty of shocking moments for those who didn’t read the novel, and a tighter, more exciting version for those who did. It hits theaters this October.
