The Woman in the Window review watch now on Netflix

 them were a huge media merger, reshoots after test-audience confusion and—of course—a global pandemic that paralyzed the film industry for over a year. Ironically, those delays made the movie timelier.

So the story of a lady who doesn’t leave her house for 10 months and thinks she witnesses a murder across the road suddenly becomes quite just a well-made thriller with an impressive ensemble cast. It’s “Rear Window” for the COVID age. except for all the craft on display, the usually crackling dialogue, and a few strong performances led by Amy Adams, “The Woman within the Window” ultimately fails to deliver on its abundant potential. It’ll leave you with a shrug instead of a pant .

ADVERTISEMENT

And there was such promise, too. Director Joe Wright (“Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice”) puts many of his showy camerawork instincts on display, making Adams’ character’s Manhattan brownstone feel both cavernous and claustrophobic. Gifted cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (“Inside Llewyn Davis,” “A Very Long Engagement”) lights the rooms of her range in garish pinks and chilly blues, reflecting both her mania and her loneliness. and therefore the always brilliant screenwriter and co-star Tracy Letts, in adapting A.J. Finn’s 2018 best-selling novel, establishes a quick tone with rat-a-tat dialogue off the highest . These exchanges allow us to know that Adams’ Anna Fox has managed to take care of her sense of humor, despite her depression and agoraphobia.

A psychologist who has suffered a breakdown, Anna has cocooned herself with food delivery, classic films, and a gentle diet of prescribed drugs and wine . (Wright employs a few of cool, split-diopter shots with the tv within the background and an extreme close-up of Anna’s face within the foreground for an unsettling, DePalmaesque touch.) But the mixture of drugs and isolation makes her perspective unreliable from the beginning , which suggests the title cards indicating days of the week are useful only to the audience. but , who among us hasn’t felt like time may be a flat circle over the

past year or so?

Tell me to travel outside,” she beseeches in one among several phone calls together with her ex-husband (Anthony Mackie), who’s also the daddy of her female child and therefore the film’s chorus of sorts. He responds patiently, “Why not make today the day you go outside?” But she doesn’t, and Letts, as her therapist, is that the one who involves her. The rhythm of their sessions and therefore the repetition of certain phrases, including the solitary location, make these early moments of “The Woman within the Window” desire a play on film within the absolute best ways. Adams reveals her character’s instability through panicked trembles and manic cackles, yet with a fundamental wisdom underneath. It’s

the type of fine-tuned technique we’ve come to expect throughout her eclectic career.

But there’s even more pressing danger on the horizon, as foreshadowed by the glass of wine she drops to the ground with a shatter. Sopping up the red liquid with a stray piece of scrap paper only emphasizes what proportion it’s like blood. The Russell family has moved in across the road , and Anna has watched their every movement very carefully from the sanctity of her perch. (One particularly striking shot finds the shadow of a lace curtain sprawled across the left side of her face within the lamplight. you’ll tell Wright and Delbonnel reveled within the film’s noir visual touches.)

“I can see your house from my room,” says the Russells’ boyishly sweet, teenage son, Ethan (Fred Hechinger), the primary time he involves visit. He seems harmless enough, but soon afterward, his mother, Jane, shows up and provides even more insight into the family. Julianne Moore plays her as a firecracker blonde: effervescent and interesting , funny and startlingly frank, she’s just the spark Anna needs. “Oh, you’re a shrink? That’s a twist!” she laughs as they feel one another out between sips of brandy and wine. She’s so fabulous, it’s enough to form you ponder whether she’s even real—and then ponder whether Anna is imagining it later when she swears she sees Jane’s husband stabbing her to death in their kitchen.

Things get even more confusing when Jane’s annoyed husband (Gary Oldman) turns up at the frantic Anna’s house with the police and therefore the woman he insists really is his wife, Jane—another blonde, more austere, now played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. She’s alive, you see. She’s right here. So who was that other woman? Where is she now? And what might Anna’s downstairs tenant, a flaky singer-songwriter played by Wyatt Russell, need to do with her? (You Marvel fans are going to be disappointed to find out that despite the presence of both Mackie and Russell, we never get a Falcon and Walker reunion here.)

The actual spelling-out of all the answers to those questions isn’t nearly as interesting because the mystery that would are . Anna’s attempts at playing detective (despite the presence of an actual detective, played by Brian Tyree Henry), aren’t as intriguing because the lingering doubt of whether she’s a delusional stalker or she’s actually onto something. An exasperated Oldman ferociously spits invective, calling her “a drunken, shut-in, pill-popping cat lady,” but the underlying trauma she’s working though gives the film some genuine heft. Watching Anna struggle to sound stable in small, subtle ways is extremely sad as she revisits the events that put her during this state. Emotional moments like that do more to form this movie work, instead of its intense, horror-inspired final showdown.

Ultimately, “The Woman within the Window” offers tons of build-up, tons of possibility. But the revelation of what’s truly happening here is anticlimactic—the equivalent of closing the curtains and avoidance from the window with a disappointed sigh.