The Woman in the Window Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out The Woman in the Window is available exclusively on Netflix on May 14. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Delayed in production due to reshoots, then in release due to the pandemic, star-studded The Woman in the Window is now a standard slice of elevated pulp for Netflix. Based on the bestseller by A. J. Finn, the film's a stylistic homage to Hitchcock's Rear Window and other paranoid thrillers of yesteryear, flaunting its idolatry quite a bit, even having Amy Adams' character watch many of these cinema classics from the confined comfort of her couch. And yes, it's fun to watch famous faces go full-tilt with a camp thriller, one with echos of Hitchcock acolytes De Palma and Demme, but overall the story offers up very little in the way of substance or suspense. Instead of being holed up because of an injury like James Stewart's protagonist in Rear Window, Adams plays a wallowing agoraphobe, Anna, who, in the midst of altering her medication (and drinking heavily while on said meds), believes to have uncovered a ruthless plot and a nefarious crime centered around the new family that's moved in across the street from her in Morningside Heights, Manhattan. Beset on all sides by red herrings and notably haunted by a recent tragedy, Anna begins to unspool and unravel into the type of spiraling, self-destructive mess that Adams has perfected in recent years in Hillbilly Elegy and HBO's Sharp Objects. Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore, Wyatt Russell, and more nicely fill out the mysterious ensemble here, many presenting themselves as looming suspects after Anna believes she's witnessed harrowing murder. Quickly, Anna's told the victim she saw get stabbed didn't even exist and due to her overwhelming anxiety, inability to distinguish time, and refusal to step outside, she's become the perfect reliably unreliable narrator. The type of lead character whose entire case is going to crumble before her, and our, eyes...right before it builds itself right back and up and tries to kill her. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/12/19/the-woman-in-the-window-official-trailer"] What's happening here, and how it all sorts itself out, is less important ultimately than watching this esteemed cast get its hands a bit sooty with some sinister schlock. That's not to say The Woman in the Window is shoddily made, just that it's empty calories that hinge on a twist that feels flat and unrewarding. It's a perfectly satisfactory thriller that uses heightened sight and sound, tethered to Anna's increased mania, to ramp up the tension in a story that, if presented more conventionally, would feel pretty dull. Darkest Hour's Joe Wright directs the film with a flare that evokes the most surreal and provocative parts of Scorsese's Cape Fear and Shutter Island while Danny Elfman's score nicely bounces back and forth between danger and cramped calm. That star of the film is truly Adams and Anna's default setting of near-meltdown. Adams is marvelous, as expected, playing a character paralyzed by grief and regret, though the movie's leanings on glossy, ghoulish imagery sometimes undercuts its attempt a real drama. The Woman in the Window has bite, but it also plays goofy occasionally. As the days pile up and Anna's mental faculties take a hit, the movie increases its amount of textural trickery and so if you're invested in the cast and the unreal elements used to showcase her various maladjustments, The Woman in the Window can be fierce and funky. If you're looking for a solid "whodunnit" however, it's just reheated ingredients from meatier meals. In fact, the twist is right out of the frames of an excellent'90s thriller, which won't be named here, but it lands without the maniacal majesty of the earlier film. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=netflix-spotlight-may-2021&captions=true"]

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