Voyeurism 2.0

“The Girl On The Train” is this fall’s based-on-a-bestseller dark horse film, ready to come up on the Oscar contenders from the rear, awash in buzz since its pre-production days.

Emily Blunt plays Rachel, a mess since the end of her marriage to Tom (Justin Theroux). They could not conceive a child together, and it all crumbled beneath the weight of that struggle. To compound the misery, Tom is now joyfully married to the woman with whom he was cheating — Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). And she has managed to give him that precious baby.

She fantasizes about who these people are …

Now Rachel drinks vodka all day, obsesses about Tom and Anna, has rages and blackouts, and — in a what can only be described as a mildly psychotic state of denial — rides the suburban commuter train into Manhattan where she has long since been fired from her PR job because of the booze.

Even worse, in a twist conveyed quite ably and somehow even with reason by director Tate Taylor (“The Help”), Rachel has developed a weird obsession with a couple down the street.

Every day, from the train window, she glimpses scenes from the life of what looks to her like an enviably perfect couple: a gorgeous blonde woman and her handsome, devoted man (Haley Bennett, Luke Evans).

She fantasizes about who these people are — how alternately tranquil and passionate their lives are. But then she witnesses a shocking event: This woman turns out to have a domestic connection with Rachel. But that’s beside the point here.

[lz_ndn video=31472992]

Based on the 2015 bestseller by Paula Hawkins, “Train” manages to put an entirely new spin on something quite time-honored in film: voyeurism. Think of it as Voyeurism 2.0.

You see, rather than simply watching a young lady doff her work clothes in favor of something skimpy, either for comedic effect or for the lead character to stumble onto a murder, a la Hitchcock, here our lead is entranced by a life that could have, and should have, once been hers — maybe even was. But now it is out of reach. Maddeningly so.

In the modern Facebook era, where so many Americans obsess over the lives of friends and families they see served up — maybe even tweaked — on social media, this end of the equation should truly rhapsodize filmgoers, especially those honest enough with themselves to allow it to resonate.

[lz_ndn video=31472406]

Boasting a musical score by Danny Elfman, the former Oingo Boingo front man strays from his usual territory of quirky to completely foreboding. The film is faithful to the book both structurally and in dramatic incident, even while the setting has been shifted from greater London to the New York City suburbs, and the title character in the film is more physically attractive than on the page.

Throw in a murder, our lead as the prime suspect, and much more intrigue, and you’ve got a potboiler to end all potboilers.

But what is truly unsettling here, yet undeniably real, is our penchant for the perverse when it comes to complete strangers — and the lives we think they are living.