The Girl on the Train: Trailer Analysis 1

The trailer for The Girl on the Train is very modern in comparison to older thriller trailers such as Seven. The Girl on the Train trailer uses no narration, but uses a little bit of the films dialogue to help the audience understand what is going on. Thriller trailers used to have narration; however narration in trailers is perceived as generally quite dated, and now tend to have captions instead in hand with some dialogue from the film characters. But The Girl on the Train does follow thriller trailer conventions such as dim lighting, slow paced editing going into fast paced editing, enigma codes being left out for the audience to make the film more intriguing, the increasing speed of the non-diegetic music and then becoming synchronous sound by being in time with the fast paced editing. Although this modern trailer does include thriller paradigms, it also challenges the expectations, particularly the fact that the lead role is in fact a woman. In thriller films the majority of the lead roles will go to men for example, Zodiac, Shutter Island and Prisoners. However The Girl on the Train has taken the female lead approach like Silence of the Lambs and Gone Girl.

Media Language

There’s a lot going on in terms of mise-en-scene, there’s dimly lit scenes contrasting with bright daylight scenes, dull and sombre colours throughout the films colour scheme with the set and characters clothing. Even pathetic fallacy is used to portray the unwelcoming and cold colours that reflect the mood of the film and the characters emotions. The settings are based in the countryside of New York, so there are lots of woodland, small and quiet neighbourhoods with big houses towns and shops, so the general feel of the settings is very quiet, little bit isolated and empty. At the beginning, the pace of the editing in the first half is quite slow along with the music, but further into the trailer the tension picks up, the action and violence begins to show, the pace of the editing quickens by using short synchronised cuts with trailer sound effects. The use of dip to black transitions with jump cuts is used as a simple effect for the fast scene transitions. Some of the main camera angles used would definitely close ups to emphasise the emotion of the characters, particularly Emily Blunts character that is seen crying in the last part of the trailer with a close up focusing on her face as she cries to highlight her emotions. A POV shot is used in the second half of the trailer from the perspective of a person walking behind a woman and grabbing her hair violently, this makes the shot quite intense and unique by not seeing the violence from the victim’s perspective. A smash cut was also used midway through the trailer as a train goes by as it enters the frame the scene abruptly changes almost as a sudden jump scare in a way. Throughout the trailer the same soundtrack is used the majority of the duration, however at the beginning a simple yet effective piano sound (along with train sound effects part way through) to create a calm atmosphere in order to be juxtaposed with the fast paced and complex soundtrack later on.