The Woman in the Window (2021)

(Netflix Streaming, May 2022) I’m probably overdosing on domestic thrillers at the moment, because I didn’t feel much except annoyance at The Woman in the Window. If you’re familiar with the subgenre, you already know the basics: a woman, alone, possibly drunk, almost certainly dysfunctional in some way, mysterious events, paranoia, certitude that someone is in danger, eventual threat to self. Fill in the blanks yourself. On paper, The Woman in the Window is promising: Amy Adams is rarely less than compelling, and having her surrounded by such notables as Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Julianne Moore and Jennifer Jason Leigh is promising enough: Adding Joe Wright as director and Tracy Letts as screenwriter seems to be merely gilding the lily. And yet, and yet… the film lands with a thud. Oh, no, Adams plays an agoraphobic drunk who grows convinced she’s just seen a murder and, zzz…. Yeah, there’s no investment here. It’s a by-the-numbers exercise, with more dumb screenwriting tricks than is tolerable for a formulaic product such as this one. Everything about the film screams contrivances, artificiality and convenience. The early moments of the film take forever to get to where the story begins, and the final “twist” is laughable. As a result, The Woman in the Window feels dull-witted, laboriously executed and far less than rewarding in its impact. It gets worse once you dig into the film’s production and find out that the best-selling novel on which it’s based was written by a serial liar, fabulist and plagiarist, that the film’s first cut got disastrous reactions from test audiences and that most reviews were still not all that impressed (how bad was that first cut?). I suspect that The Woman in the Window will nonetheless annoy other viewers less than it annoyed me – a combination of decent actors, top-notch technical credentials and pandemic-friendly premise may outweigh jaded objections. Furthermore, I also suspect that the over-familiarity of the film may play as comforting material to audiences wanting safe expected thrills. If that’s you, well, there’s The Woman in the Window to stare at.