Netflix‘s The Woman in the Window is the latest entry in a very specific movie category – airport novels turned into movies, most often with an incredible cast. Usually, they’re hit and miss, with some extremely well adapted projects (Gone Girl and Sharp Objects – also starring Amy Adams) and some blunders (Dark Places). This is no Gone Girl.
Amy Adams stars as Anna Fox, an agoraphobic woman living alone in New York who begins spying on her new neighbors, only to witness a disturbing act of violence. She is an alcoholic, is addicted to pills, loves watching movie and messing into people’s lives. Basically, a half-baked idea of what an interesting story should be like.
Let’s get this out of the way: this is a bad movie. But blaming this movie for being bad is like blaming a donkey for not being a horse. The source material (A. J. Finn‘s self-titled novel) is as bad as this movie. It surely was a difficult task for screenwriter Tracy Letts (who also appears as Adams’ therapist) to adapt the very mediocre novel into a coherent movie.
The story is extremely convoluted and half baked. There is a feeling that the movie had many scenes that were cut because the story jumps from one point to another. It is also very predictable. If you have read any crime novels, you can predict some of the twists.
A pretty incredible cast has been assembled for this bad story. Academy winners and nominees Adams, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tracy Letts have all agreed to star in this misguided movie. Brian Tyree Henry, Anthony Mackie and Wyatt Russell also join but even they can’t sell the bad dialogue.
There is however something to be appreciated here and that is the visual style. The cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel is gorgeous, draped in reds and blacks and provides a moody atmosphere. The production design is also inspired and presents us a New York town house that I would love to live in.
This is directed by Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement), which is another surprise that the movie is not even coherent. Wright has proven to be a master of adapting novels into movies but this material is out of his grasp.
Ultimately, this project will go down as a Netflix movie that people will see and go from ‘oh that seems interesting’ to plain ‘meh’. 4.3/10
