“The Girl on the Train” arrives in theaters, looking to tap into the same audience that enjoyed “Gone Girl.” Unlike its predecessor, this novel doesn’t translate well to the screen with a clunky narrative and a twist that ultimately isn’t very twisty.

That’s a shame, since the three female leads (Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson) do everything they can to hold it together. They make the film tolerable, even as it comes completely off the rails.

Blunt plays Rachel, a divorcee who can’t put her previous marriage behind her. She takes a train each day to New York for work, passing her old house and dreaming of a life that could have been. Her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) is now married to Anna (Ferguson) with a newborn child.

Rachel becomes obsessed with a young girl named Megan (Bennett), who also happens to be Anna and Tom’s nanny and lives two houses down. Rachel sees Megan’s relationship with her husband Scott (Luke Evans) from afar – romanticizing in her head a perfect relationship. That image is shattered when one day from the train she sees Megan with another man. Filled with rage, Rachel goes on a drinking binge and wakes up the next day convinced she has done something very bad.

That suspicion only deepens when Megan goes missing.

“The Girl on the Train” is based on a Paula Hawkins novel. While I haven’t read it, I feel like the story is much more suited for written words than a feature film with the jumping back and forth between the three main characters’ story lines and the shift from the present to the past throughout – sometimes only to create red herrings that are easy to see past.

Director Tate Taylor moves it all along at a pace that is way too slow for a thriller of this magnitude, with the final act easy to see long before “Train” reaches its final destination.

Blunt at least keeps the audience’s attention, while Bennett gets to show her versatilely with a vastly different role than the one she played in “The Magnificent Seven.” You also get Allison Janney as her usually reliable self, playing the detective who suspects Rachel is a link to Megan’s disappearance.

They deserved a better film, one that didn’t use some queasy moral lines to illicit an audience cheer like the one in my screening in the final moments of the film. It only adds to the uncomfortableness of the whole thing, making “The Girl on the Train” a rather tepid attempt at a Hitchcock-style thriller.

Also in theaters

While “The Girl on the Train” disappoints, “Deepwater Horizon” (B+) exceeds expectations. Reuniting the “Lone Survivor” team of actor Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg, this is an amazing re-creation of the 2010 BP oil spill that was the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Wahlberg is in his element as family man Mike Williams, who sees his latest job on Deepwater Horizon as just another day of work. Before long he finds himself in a fight for survival along with other crew members (including Kurt Russell and Gina Rodriguez) and BP representatives (including John Malkovich).

The cast also includes Kate Hudson as Mike’s wife.

“Deepwater Horizon” plays like a disaster film with the rig serving as a non-human character that Berg brings to life. When the rig does blow about an hour in, it is a visual spectacle and should probably best be witnessed in IMAX.

But as these crew members try to survive the destruction around them, I started to realize how much I was invested in the plight of these characters – a credit to the cast and Berg to spend so much time in the first half allowing the audience to get to know these people.

Like the recent film “Sully,” this is a story about normal people who become heroes, showing how unusual circumstances can bring out the best in people.

“Deepwater Horizon” is rated PG-13 for prolonged intense disaster sequences and related disturbing images and is now playing at the Regal Greenwood Mall Stadium 10 and Highland Cinemas in Glasgow.

— To read Micheal Compton’s thoughts on other films, visit his blog at bgdailynews.com/blogs/reel_to_reel or on Twitter @mcompton428. Email him at mcompton@bgdailynews.com.

Starring: Emily Blunt and Haley Bennett

Director: Tate Taylor

Rating: R for violence, sexual content, language and nudity

Playing at: Regal Bowling Green Stadium 12, Highland Cinemas (Glasgow)

Grade: C-