The Woman in the Window (2021) Director: Joe Wright
An agoraphobic child psychologist Anna Fox (Amy Adams) lives alone inside her New York brownstone all day while watching classic movies (obligatory nod to Rear Window) and peaking in on her neighbors through her window –particularly a new family, the Russells, who moves in and seems to be perfect. Anna’s ex-husband (Anthony Mackie) and daughter live elsewhere but she speaks with them frequently. She takes prescribed pills and also drinks frequently, a dangerous concoction which makes her an unreliable narrator. Much like Anna Fox, the author of the original novel The Woman in the Window –in the vein of Gone Girl (2012) by Gillian Flynn and The Girl on the Train (2015) by Paula Hawkins was written by Daniel Mallory (pseudonym A. J. Finn), a writer with a deep history of mental illness whose own account of his past has proven to be riddled with falsehoods.
Who do we trust? How much of Anna’s memories are reliable? Anna meets the Russell boy, Ethan (Fred Hechinger) and his mother Jane (Julianne Moore) and father Alistair (Gary Oldman). At any rate, without revealing too much, a murder occurs and with many questionable motives the mystery eventually is revealed. Is the culprit Alistair? Is Jane who she says she is? Do we trust Anna’s backstory? What her downstairs tenant named David (Wyatt Russell)? Sadly, the big reveal is anything but. The Window in the Window promised a lot of Hitchcockian intrigue, but was ultimately anti-climactic.
Released during the milieu of the COVID-19 pandemic, a movie about a lone woman who is fearful of going outside was timely. But by all accounts, it was a chaotic production filled with delays, media mergers, re-writes, and even re-shoots when initial test audiences responded negatively to the film (Tony Gilroy was brought in to reshoot the film). In spite of this great mix of directors, compelling source material, atmospheric cinematography, and an all-star cast, this is a disappointing film in my view. Thematically, it tries to reach back to the heights of Rear Window or Gaslight, but it falls far short. The third act of this movie simply runs off the rails and ends in a yawning cliché. This was a movie with huge potential, especially with someone like Joe Wright in the director’s chair (who also directed Atonement and Pride and Prejudice), as well as Tony Gilroy, as well (the Bourne movies, Michael Clayton, Rogue One), but sadly The Woman in the Window misses the mark,
Finn’s novel was a big disappointment so this doesn’t surprise me.
I didn’t read the novel and the film felt somewhat too derivative for me to be interesting. But the thought of Amy Adams, given her distinguished talents, taking on such a film was interesting at least.