Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ novel (the source is worth mentioning, given the morose chunk of voiceover that opens the proceedings and the appearance of high-octane lines like “she loved you in ways that people only dream of being loved” — this said to a distraught husband immediately after telling him the “she” in question was having an affair) is as sour and slippery as it is polished and pretty. The film’s central symbol is New York’s Untermeyer Fountain: three lissome bronze ladies dancing hand in hand around its rim. In the film, they are Rachel (Emily Blunt), a blackout drunk who turned to the bottle when she found she couldn’t conceive, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), the pampered new mother who had an affair with Rachel’s husband before eventually marrying him, and Megan (Haley Bennett), the hot mess of a young wife who lives next door to Anna in suburban paradise and also works as her nanny(!) But what, oh what, could be indicated by the rising jet of water about which those ladies circle? As a thriller (one of the women turns up missing), its hothouse elements are smartly assembled; as a psychodrama, it relies heavily on extreme closeups for implied intimacy; as a redemption story about the conquest of personal demons, it’s a copout. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
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