It might be a tad light when matched against the wittiest mysteries, but for all intents and purposes, The Girl On The Train is a tightly-wound Hitchcockian ride wrought with tension. Elements of voyeurism, self-loathing and murderous intent mix together in a volatile cocktail stirred gently by director Tate Taylor, who doesn’t dilute a single ingredient.

As a big-screen thriller, The Girl on a Train is just so-so, but taken as 112 minutes of upscale psychodramatic confessional bad-behavior porn, it generates a voyeuristic zing that’s sure to carry audiences along.

Like a fridge whose door’s been left open overnight, the film doesn’t feel chilly enough. It’s not terrible, but fans of the book may well be disappointed.

The Girl on the Train engages more than it rivets and brings goosebumps to skin more than chilling to the bone.

It’s as if the book has been given a full-body massage en route to the screen, teasing away some of the spinal kinks that actually made it interesting.