This film, like the book upon which it is based, has garnered acclaim, some of it deserved.  And yet I am not a fan of the film, for two reasons I will detail below.  But first, the good.  Tate Taylor’s film is styled in classicism, taking its time to tell its story with a welcome emphasis on character and plot development, and is beautifully composed and scored.  This is how movies used to be made, with skill and artistry, without rapid editing and a plethora of clichés.

And yet I have three issues which diminish its impact for me.  The first is endemic to the material: the characters are rotten.  I don’t mean badly portrayed, I mean they are rotten people.  There is no one for which to root — the heroine Rachel (Emily Blunt) is an alcoholic abuser; the woman (Haley Bennett) at the center of the mystery is a lying nymphomaniac; the husband (Justin Theroux) is a serial cheater; the psychotherapist (Edgar Ramirez) has issues with patient boundaries.  I don’t like anybody in this story — especially Rachel, whose despicability is overwhelming.

But Rachel has a problem worse than all her personality flaws put together — she is an unreliable character.  While she isn’t an unreliable narrator (that’s a real thing, but Rachel is not a narrator), she is someone whose version of events cannot be trusted.  This is not revealed until late in the story, which negates much of the drama and meaning of what has gone before.  It isn’t like The Sixth Sense, which left clues all along the way to its surprising conclusion; it’s that Rachel is wrong about some key elements of the story, which viewers would have no way of knowing.  I felt cheated when the story takes this turn because I didn’t believe it; she should have known all along.

Finally, the characters do really stupid things during the last act, when the truth is finally clear.  Really stupid, and unbelievable.  Keeping the cops out of the story at the climax is simply not convincing.  So all of the good cinematic ways in which the story is told are lessened, in my view, by the story itself and the trickery employed in the narrative.  Ultimately it is not a likable film, nor is it dramatically satisfactory.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  22 October 2016.