'The Woman in the Window' Review
R: Violence and language
Runtime: 1 Hr and 40 Minutes
Production Companies: 20th Century Studios, Fox 2000 Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions
Distributor: Netflix
Director: Joe Wright
Writer: Tracy Letts
Cast: Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julianne Moore
Release Date: May 14, 2021
Netflix
Anna Fox (Amy Adams) is an agoraphobic child psychologist who finds herself keeping tabs on the picture-perfect family across the street through the windows of her New York City brownstone. Her life is turned upside down when she inadvertently witnesses a brutal crime.
Oh, Woman in the Window, we meet at last.
I thought this movie would never see the light of day considering *clears throat*:
It got delayed multiple times (the initial release date was October 2019 with awards season in mind)
Disney’s purchase of Fox occurred during post-production
It performed poorly in test screenings, prompting the entire ending to be re-cut
Pandemmy
Selling to Netflix
Scott Rudin being outed as a douchebag
This movie has been through the wringer and now it’s finally here for you on Netflix.
Given that this is directed by Joe Wright, who’s known for extravagant and stylish period pieces that usually star Keira Knightley, this has to be his most contemporary project yet. As far as direction goes, the film is enticing from a visual standpoint. He couldn’t display his usual flair since most of the story takes place in the interior of Anna’s Upper West Side apartment, but he keeps his signature bright, glossy colors on hand. It may be a Hitchcock knockoff, but it still has plenty of Joe Wright-ness in it. Since Anna takes a bunch of different prescriptions, sees disturbing imagery from her neighbors across the street, and downs various alcoholic drinks on the daily, she spends much of the film spiraling and disorienting herself from reality. The camerawork correlates with her motions, putting you into her mindset. The gorgeous cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel makes Anna’s experience visually disorienting as you witness this mystery from her point of view. The film often plays with the lighting from different corridors in Anna’s lavish house to make each room look like its own set-piece. You get the sense of Anna’s isolation, especially during the night scenes, but at the same time you never feel she’s completely trapped because the house is so huge and pretty that it made me foam at the mouth.
For a single-set thriller — or a thriller that has minimal locations — it moves at a very swift pace. Granted, they take the tone far too seriously for its own good (heheh, up until a certain point), but there’s always a different twist and turn at each corner. Every character that Anna encounters feeds you a new piece of information about the troubled Russell family from across the street. Maybe it’s because my brain was off and I had super low expectations, but it was so enjoyable seeing this mystery unfold in real-time no matter how silly and tonally inconsistent it got. Amy Adams' performance carries the movie as this manic, nosy, reverse-Karen (she has a Black family) character, and even though the screenplay is weak, she gives her all with the performance. You can put Amy Adams in any role and she will adapt to it seamlessly no matter what its quality is.
Okay, I think we all collectively knew this movie was going to be a mess when Disney delayed it due to test screenings going sour and it’s very transparent where it falls short, which is just about… everywhere. Listen, nobody can do Hitchcock better than Hitchcock. No matter how many times you try to reinvent the Rear Window wheel, you’re gonna end up looking like a fool. In this riff, you have a nosy woman who is basically a Karen (except for the fact that she has a Black family) who suffers from trauma and agoraphobia. Her mental state and how she copes with it is pretty much used as the crux of a mystery thriller that is not fully thought-out.
The screenplay by actor/playwright Tracy Letts is both simple and excessively theatrical. A vast amount of the dialogue is stage-like as the characters hardly ever speak like people and more like stage characters. They go in and out of notions that make no sense, such as David (Wyatt Russell), who starts as Anna’s charming tenant who lives in her basement and assists her around the house whenever he can. Next thing you know, he has a weird 180-degree turn where he spurts aggression out of nowhere. Characters often go on excessive bouts of dialogue that are so off-brand and don’t correlate with the way they were introduced. While Letts’ intention was to make the mystery feel like anyone in Anna’s circle could be a culprit of the murder she witnessed, much of the dialogue feels unintentionally awkward. It’s jarring but at the same time, the actors deliver them with so much veracity you can’t help but snicker.
The narrative flows at a decent natural progression for the most part, but once the twisty third act comes into fruition, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, it crashes straight into a brick wall. You could easily tell when and where the film was rewritten and reshot just by the insanely silly finale and yet… I fucking loved it. I knew what I was getting into and that third act did not disappoint by any means. The third act is so batshit insane and hysterical that I had no other choice but to applaud. The Woman in the Window is a crazy mess that is so campy and over-the-top, yet I had so much trashy fun with it. Yeah, it takes itself a bit too seriously but due to Adam’s committed performance, the swift pacing, unintentional laughs, and a batshit insane third act, I can only call this the best bad movie of the year, which is a title I don’t use lightly. With a little bit of boxed wine and popcorn on a Friday night, you’ll have a total blast.
