The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
INT. TRAIN
EMILY BLUNT (V.O)
I'm on a train! Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I in America? We never know! No really, we never actually find out. I just gawk at a house two houses down from where I used to live with my ex-husband, Justin Theroux. I'm an unreliable narrator and a complete disaster.
HALEY BENNETT (V.O)
I am also a narrator in this movie! I'm the girl who lives two houses down from where Emily used to live. I have a lot of sex on my balcony and in front of windows with my husband, Luke Evans.
EMILY BLUNT
Whoa that's kind of a lot of characters. I am shithoused 100% of the time so this could get a little fuzzy for me.
HALEY BENNETT
Oh it does. Which apparently is a stellar new way to craft exposition.
REBECCA FERGUSON
And I am Justin's new wife, who lives in the house two houses down from the house where Emily gawks at. We have a baby and we are adorably happy.
EMILY BLUNT
Which is why I've been drinking heavily... for two fucking years. And all I do is ride a train and imagine my life is Haley's life because she's happy with her husband and mine cheated on me with Rebecca. I want to be just like Haley because Haley is perfect and beautiful and she has a lot of hot sex with her hot husband, just like my ex husband does with his new hot wife who has a cute new baby.
HALEY BENNETT
We already covered that.
EMILY BLUNT
I know. But really nothing much happens that isn't choppy and fuzzy. So you, husband, hot, perfect. Repeat.
INT. EDGAR RAMIREZ'S PSYCHIATRIST'S OFFICE
HALEY BENNETT
Ugh Edgar. I am so bored with being a wife. We don't even do much to avoid maddening the audience with the poor pretty white girl trope. Half the time I speak like I've taken a large amount of Valium. By the way would you like to fuck?
EDGAR RAMIREZ
YES! But I'm a professional and could lose my license. So no. I mean yeah... but no. (Yes I do very badly).
HALEY BENNETT
Well we need enough dudes in this movie to throw off the extremely obvious scent of the bad guy, so whether or not we actually bone is going to remain somewhat of a mystery.
EDGAR RAMIREZ
I see. Am I also innately evil like every other man in this movie?
HALEY BENNETT
That's vague, but probably not. Maybe just unprofessional. Perhaps. It's unclear.
EDGAR RAMIREZ
Do you also drink vodka twenty four hours a day? Why don't we know?
HALEY BENNETT
Because it's a mystery Edgar. Get with the program. Anyway, I'm beautifully damaged and men love the shit out of that. I'm even flashing you my hoo haa.
EDGAR RAMIREZ
But really you don't.
HALEY BENNETT
... But it was just on screen.
EDGAR RAMIREZ
But you didn't in real life. Kind of like how we don't actually have sex. Presumedly.
HALEY BENNETT
Oh right. So what's the mystery here?
EDGAR RAMIREZ
It's you. You are about to get gone, girl.
HALEY BENNETT
Well now who could possibly want to cause poor beautiful me to disappear?
INT. JUSTIN THEROUX'S HOUSE
JUSTIN greets his wife, REBECCA FERGUSON.
JUSTIN THEROUX
Hello sweetie! How was your day!? I am trying REALLY HARD to hide my rather sinister eyebrows! I am such a goddamn good husband.
REBECCA FERGUSON
Well, Haley suddenly quit and then insulted my choice to be a stay at home mother with a nanny.
JUSTIN THEROUX
Haley was our nanny? Well I'll be damned. So anyway, I've got to answer my phone which never stops ringing. It's my crazy drunk ex, Emily. There are no other emotionally unstable woman in this movie who keep calling my phone. I'm just going to stand around and not be suspicious at all.
INT. TRAIN
EMILY BLUNT
Here I am again. On a train. HOLY MOTHER! There's Haley making out with a guy who is not her husband but clearly the psychiatrist she was just not having sex with!
EDGAR RAMIREZ
So we DO have sex?
HALEY BENNET
Keep your weenis in your pants, stallion. You were sadly comforting me. I've told you a sad dead baby story that does nothing to further the plot, except to bring you here and sadly comfort me.
EDGAR RAMIREZ
That did not look like sad comforting.
HALEY BENNETT
Well apparently when you comfort someone, you embrace and smash your faces together a lot.
EMILY becomes infuriated that HALEY is (possibly) cheating on her husband so she goes out and gets drunk. Which is what she had planned to do anyway, but now she does it angrily. She wakes up beaten up and bruised. LAURA PEPRON is her roommate.
LAURA PEPRON
Son of a bitch Emily! What in hell happened to you?
EMILY BLUNT
I have no idea. Drinking can erase lots of memories. Like, all of the important ones.
POLICE OFFICER ALLISON JANNEY and some other police officer arrive. He will remain nameless because when you walk into a room with ALLISON JANNEY you no longer matter.
ALLISON JANNEY
So Emily, where were you last night?
EMILY BLUNT
Uhhhh. A tunnel. There was a man. Or two men. And a coat. I think? There may have been a woman.
Emily has fifteen flashbacks yelling "WHORE!" at someone in the tunnel.
EMILY BLUNT
Yep, there was also a woman.
ALLISON JANNEY
So you're an alcoholic? I know this because you lost your job two years ago due to your alcoholism.
LAURA PEPRON
Seriously? Where in the hell do you go all day then?
ALLISON JANNEY
And more importantly, last night?
EMILY BLUNT
Tunnel. Man. Coat. Whore. Repeat.
ALLISON JANNEY
Haley Bennett went missing and you were seen in the area of her house last night. Well, around your ex husband's house because apparently you sort of stalk them. Maybe. We'll be in touch.
LAURA PEPRON
Seeing as you came home wasted, beaten up, and you have no idea what happened, you should probably stay away from all these people-
EMILY BLUNT
I HAVE A PURPOSE NOW!!!!
EMILY goes to LUKE'S house.
EMILY BLUNT
Hey Luke. You've never met me but I was friends with Haley.
LUKE EVANS
How? I monitored all of her phone calls and kept track of her passwords. I was emotionally abusive to her so she couldn't have had any friends that I didn't know about.
EMILY BLUNT
We are just going to gloss right over that and pan on in your on your fantastic abs. Anyway we did yoga together. No, pilates. Yogalates. That's actually a thing. Anyway, I saw her with a man.
LUKE EVANS
At Yogalates?
EMILY BLUNT
No. From a train on your balcony.
LUKE EVANS
She went to a psychiatrist a lot. Is this the man you saw?
EMILY BLUNT
I don't remember.
LUKE EVANS
She was also the nanny for your ex, Justin Theroux, and his wife.
EMILY BLUNT
Cool. Anyway, I remember now and it was the psychiatrist who was kissing Haley.
EDGAR gets arrested but then released. Also, HALEY was found dead. Meanwhile, ALLISON has another talk with EMILY.
ALLISON JANNEY
Edgar didn't murder Haley, but he did mention her husband is nuts. Also, it turns out she was pregnant but the baby did not belong to Edgar or her husband. As an unreliable lush who got off the train at that stop the night Haley went missing, you are the most obvious suspect. Sort of.
EMILY BLUNT
Sorry I don't remember what happened that night. My ex, Justin, has always told me that I black out and do terrible things I have no recollection of doing, which caused me to deteriorate into a hollow shell of a human being and he left me after I couldn't conceive. Real stand up guy. It should be noted that Haley was working for him.
ALLISON JANNEY
If only we could think of a third guy in Haley's life who would want to get rid of her after finding out she was pregnant...
INT. JUSTIN THEROUX'S HOUSE
REBECCA FERGUSON finds a phone that falls out of JUSTIN'S things. She listens to the voicemail message and learns that it was HALEY'S phone. She takes this very alarming information to nobody and does nothing.
Meanwhile, LUKE visits EMILY.
LUKE EVANS
You fucking cunt. I basically incriminated myself because that psychiatrist told the cops I was abusive! Fuck them and fuck you! I'm not abusive goddammit!
Luke throws Emily against a wall.
EMILY BLUNT
Whoa. Your abusiveness and my two seconds of sobriety have helped me remember something. I'm pretty sure my husband was abusive too.
LUKE EVANS
You mean the husband whom Haley used to work for? The one with the patented asshole face?
EMILY BLUNT
Yeah, he used to tell me I'd do terrible things when I drink, like throw golf clubs against a wall and ruin dinner parties that got him fired. His old boss recently informed me that I didn't do anything to ruin the party and Justin got fired for fucking everybody. Apparently he wasn't very discreet about that.
LUKE EVANS
You should take this information to Allison Janney. Whatever you do, don't go near Justin Theroux.
INT. JUSTIN THEROUX'S HOUSE
REBECCA FERGUSSON
Uh, Justin. I found Haley's phone in your stuff. Did you encourage me to hire her because you were fucking her? That's what matters right now. Not that fact that she was found dead recently.
JUSTIN THEROUX
Yeah so what? I got off on having the two of you in the house together. I actually say something exactly like this and if it makes you nauseous, that is the intent. I'm fucking disgusting. Oh look, Emily is here.
EMILY BLUNT
In a moment of clarity I remembered everything that night. I followed you and Haley into a tunnel, and then you came to me and beat the shit out of me. And then nobody heard from Haley again.
JUSTIN THEROUX
And in my own flashback, we learn I discovered Haley was pregnant with my baby and I responded by bashing in her head.
REBECCA FERGUSSON
This is all very interesting but I'm going to just take my baby and leave the room. I'm also going to stand by while Justin tries to strangle you. I'm either in shock or really really apathetic.
EMILY BLUNT
Yeah thanks for the help.
JUSTIN attacks EMILY so EMILY stabs him in the neck with a corkscrew. REBECCA runs out of the house and twists the corkscrew into his neck.
EMILY BLUNT
So I after I single handedly subdue the murderous asshole, THEN you come along and make sure he's really for real dead?
REBECCA FERGUSON
Well, you know. It's all about the sisterhood.
EMILY BLUNT
True. Which is what I wax poetic about in the voice over now. While staring at a statue with three girls holding hands talking about how we are all intertwined now because of our common circumstances.
HALEY BENNETT
Uh. I'm pretty sure I nonchalantly waited in the car while Justin made you disappear behind a tunnel and came back with bloody fists, so that we could have a conversation about me fucking him while he was married to...
REBECCA FERGUSON
Me. And I laughed in your face about how well Justin can lie because we did it to you while we were fucking behind your back for months while you were married to him.
EMILY BLUNT
Right. That's what I meant. Sisterhood.
END