I can’t remember exactly when I first heard about The Woman in the Window, the wannabe Hitchcockian thriller unceremoniously dumped on Netflix this week, but I think it was in the same breath as Steven Soderbergh’s trainwreck The Laundromat. See, it was early 2019 – Green Book had just pulled off its controversial triumph at the Academy Awards over Alfonso Cuarón’s more deserving domestic drama Roma. All of us disappointed awards season aficionados were getting back up off the ground, dusting ourselves off, and looking forward to the next year’s Oscars. And so, speculation began to take place around exactly which films would be in contention, come early 2020. Enter films like The Laundromat and Cats – films that seemed promising enough when all we had were the titles but turned out to be unequivocal critical disasters. One of the films that came up prominently in conversation was The Woman in the Window, and it was a promising one indeed.
Adapted from a popular Gone Girl-esque crime novel by AJ Finn, Tracy Letts’ script had attracted Joe Wright, a director often considered a bit of an Oscars favourite thanks to the success of his period dramas Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Darkest Hour, the lattermost of which finally won Gary Oldman an Academy Award. Add to that the truly impressive cast – Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Wyatt Russell, Bryan Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Julianne Moore – the kind of pedigree that you only ever see assembled for prestige dramas. But it was really Adams’ leading status that garnered attention from Oscar pundits – over the past fifteen years she has earned a whopping six Academy Award nominations with not a single win, a streak that puts her second only to Glenn Close. Maybe, we all speculated, this film would be the role that finally landed her the Oscar that she’d been pining after for over a decade. Maybe this was the one we’d all been waiting for.
And then, over the course of 2019 and then into 2020, multiple problems befell the production. The test screenings were not well-recieved, and a new cut followed, with Tony Gilroy brought in to polish the script. The film was delayed, first to 2020, and then to 2021, missing two Oscar seasons and changing hands in the process as Fox (newly acquired by Disney) offloaded the movie onto Netflix, who I’d imagine accepted it with open arms. And, to make matters worse, both the author of the source material and the film’s high-profile producer, Scott Rudin, were each caught up in widely-publicised scandals. All of these issues coalesced into what seems like a trainwreck of a filmmaking experience, and ultimately led to the movie being quietly released on Netflix this past week, without any of the buzz or excitement that we’d imagined would accompany it, back in the COVID-free era of 2019.
I’m spending so much time on behind-the-scenes information because it’s juicy and compelling, which is more than I can say for this film that it spawned. While The Woman in the Window is not quite the disaster that its troubled production would lead you to believe, it still fails to deliver on most fronts. I’m left wondering how exactly it attracted such an all-star cast, as the vast majority of them are utterly wasted in the roles. Anthony Mackie is on screen for about five minutes in total, Jennifer Jason Leigh even less so. The movie flashes back to Julianne Moore a lot, but really she’s only in one scene. What’s more, all these big names give surprisingly lacklustre performances; Gary Oldman in particular is actually terrible here, something that I don’t say about him very often – although I have to conclude that the script to deserves to shoulder part of the blame for that one. Amy Adams and Wyatt Russell are at least alright, but they’re stuck with the blandest, least-zingy, most tell-don’t-show dialogue I’ve heard since… well, Amy Adams’ last Netflix film. Seriously, that woman needs to get herself a new agent, because her current role choices leave a lot to be desired.
Tracy Letts is probably most known for his theatre work, and this is the first film of his that hasn’t been adapted from one of his own plays. Unfortunately, some of the worst impulses from that art form carry over into the film, where they are far less suited. There is literally a bit where Adams steps away from the other characters, isolating herself in the frame, and delivers a monologue while staring into the middle distance. It’s painfully awkward, and even her considerable acting talent fails to salvage the forced, unsubtle writing. While we’re on the subject of Letts’ writing, he also treats us to what has got to be the worst climax in recent history, wherein the film abandons any pretence of being a serious thriller and devolves into something resembling a slasher movie, complete with the killer (whose identity will not be named in this review) disappearing and reappearing in ways that beggar belief and attacking the ‘final girl’ with various household appliances. If it sounds stupid and out-of-place, that’s because it is.
I will, however, reserve some praise for Joe Wright and his cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel. No, the scenes aren’t quite as crisp and well-communicated as the ones in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, which this film was obviously inspired by/ripped off from, nor do we get as nuanced a feel of the setting’s geography, but I did genuinely enjoy the way the film looked. It is far more stylistically adventurous than you might initially be led to believe and most of this experimentation pays off (with the exception of things like the aforementioned play-like blocking). Colours, framing, the split-dioptre shots… it’s all far more competent than the rest of the film. Danny Elfman’s score also isn’t that bad – it’s a bit generic but it at least adds to the film rather than detracts from it.
Overall, The Woman in the Window is exactly as uninspiring as you might expect. It’s only actively terrible in a few scenes (the climax and whenever Oldman is on screen, for instance), but the film is so flat that it’s exceedingly hard to get invested in any of the film’s characters, many of whom are given so little screentime that the casting of such big stars honestly beggars belief. There are some solid moments of stylisation and even surrealism, but neither the visuals nor the considerable talent present in the cast are enough to save Tracy Letts’ dire script, which would have been far better suited to the stage and the screen. Given the production issues, the disappointment of the movie is kind of expected, but it’s still a shame that so much talent was wasted on this shallow, unsuccessful star vehicle.
Score: ⭐⭐
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