Cripplingly agoraphobic Dr. Anna Fox (Amy Adams) is living in almost complete isolation in her gloomy Manhattan apartment, separated from her husband (Anthony Mackie) and daughter. Her only connections to the outside world are the frequent tabs she keeps on her neighbors when she gazes through her spacious windows and the occasional exchanges she has with her tenant David (Wyatt Russell), who lives in her basement. This eerie seclusion is interrupted by the Russell family’s arrival across the street, and when Anna thinks she witnesses the patriarch Alistair (Gary Oldman) murder his wife Jane (Julianne Moore), the unraveling mystery proves to be something potentially even more chilling. Did Alistair actually kill Jane, or is Anna finally succumbing to her deteriorating psyche?
Plagued by negative test screenings, extensive reshoots, countless delays and even a changing of studios, Joe Wright’s long-belated Amy-Adams-headlining thriller and adaptation of the 2018 novel of the same name has finally premiered on Netflix. How is it? Well, perhaps some windows should stay closed.
The Woman in the Window is a stultifying, misguided and baffling production from an otherwise promising team, composed of director Joe Wright, screenwriter Tracy Letts and a clearly dynamic cast. It never ceases to derail in almost every meager scene- a cacophony of fundamentally poor choices.
Director Joe Wright has always had a showy style, but his sensibilities have suited the material in wistfully elegant period pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. However, they simply feel incompatible with the thriller genre here. Wright is unable to sustain suspense and attempts to compensate with oversaturated stylistic flourishes. Dutch angles, abrupt zooms and abstract imaging pervade this film, making it more elusive and chaotic than pointed and flowing. Wright clearly mired this film’s aesthetic in flimsy homages to Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Rear Window for obvious reasons.
The storytelling is also staggeringly feeble. It is incoherent to the point of utter confusion. Good mysteries are built on sprinkling bread crumbs, but the ones here dissipate upon impact. The audience is baited with atrocious dialogue and irrational, erratic structure for a finale that is profoundly unfulfilling and disproportionate with the preceding events. This film also fails to be both a satisfying mystery and compelling character piece, as it doesn’t know how to derive intrigue from character and vice versa. It’s like two parallel trains that cannot even manage to crash together.
The Woman in the Window earns points for at least trying; you simply cannot say that it lacks initiative. The cinematography (by lauded DP Bruno Delbonnel) and production design are gorgeous, brimming with ominous and lurid detail. Amy Adams is humanly incapable of giving a bad performance, and she is utterly riveting here. There are moments of good tension, but they are almost immediately deflated by minuscule narrative choices. It’s just that the collective execution is incohesive.
Overall, The Woman in the Window is superficially engineered, rendering itself as pointless and vapid. Keep the drapes pulled on this one. It’s a real pa(i)n(e).
Grade: D+
The Woman in the Window is now available on Netflix.
Photo Credit / Netflix
