The long (long) awaited film adaptation of The Woman in the Window finally dropped on Netflix last week. And while the release was met with excitement, particularly from readers, the reviews have been a resounding meh. Emily and Susan both read the book and saw the movie, and they have some thoughts.
Susan: First, let’s talk about the book a little. I think we both really enjoyed it, right?
Emily: Yes, it was one of those books where I knew I wasn’t supposed to like it. But I ended up really enjoying it. I just found reading it to be a fun experience and I allowed myself to just let go and enjoy the ride. Which I feel like I very rarely do.
Susan: Same here. I really just enjoyed the process. I thought Anna was a great narrator, and I was really invested in her. I wasn’t even aware of the controversy surrounding the author until after I read it, so I only felt weird in retrospect, but it honestly didn’t affect how much I liked the book. Just for our readers’ information, here’s the scoop: author A.J. Finn (real name Dan Mallory) is a big ol’ liar.
Emily: Yeah, he’s a terrible person, but I’d already bought the book and read it before I even knew this, so it is what it is, I guess. I probably wouldn’t pick up another one of his books, but I enjoyed this one.
Susan: The film, starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, and Julianne Moore, faced an uphill battle from the start, with initial test audiences saying they did not enjoy or understand the movie. Even after a new screenwriter was brought in for rewrites, audiences were still confused. The release was pushed back from October 2019 to May 2020, and then was sold to Netflix during the pandemic. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were composing the original score, but dropped out during reshoots (it’s cool because they won an Oscar for their work on Soul). And now that it’s finally here, it’s being received pretty poorly. What did you think of the film overall, and did the issues of its production affect your viewing at all?
Emily: You know, it’s been a while since I read the book. I think I might have read it a year before you did? So there’s a lot I don’t remember about the little details of the book. I was looking forward to this movie in part because I was excited about sort of re-experiencing the suspense of the book since I’d forgotten a lot of the major twists. But the suspense just never happened for me.
Susan: I was a little wary going into the movie, knowing how many roadblocks it had already hit. Personally, my biggest issue with the film is that the twist doesn’t feel earned. In the novel, we spend a lot more time in the realm of not knowing what really happened to the woman Anna thinks is Jane Russell. We also get a side plot of Anna acting as a kind of telemedicine therapist for other sufferers of agoraphobia, only to be catfished by a person who turns out to be Ethan. While this bit might have been difficult to convey on film, the online plot did add quite a bit to the novel for me, revealing how Ethan had been fooling Anna little by little the entire time. Without that, and without more time spent on Ethan, the twist just felt kind of random instead of something that had been building over time.
Emily: Oh, see, I’d forgotten about the tele-therapy thing. That would have been nice to include. One thing I wish they’d kind of left out? Anna talking to her husband and child. This was in the book too, and I never thought it was a shocking reveal in the book either. And it didn’t translate very well to screen. It was pretty obvious that the husband and child were dead for the whole movie. In other scenes where she’s talking on the phone, we see Anna talking on the phone, but when she talks to her family, she’s not holding a phone. Dead giveaway. And there’s no reason for this to be there. She can have the backstory with the husband and daughter and the car accident without literally talking to them.
Of course you are…dead.
Susan: This definitely didn’t translate the same way on screen. In the book, I genuinely didn’t see it coming that they were dead until right before the reveal. I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly about the book, but in the novel, it seemed like Anna actually did know that her family was dead, and while she was in super major denial, I thought she knew. When it was revealed, that was when she finally had to face it, and that’s when the reader was let in on it. In the movie, the reveal felt like Anna was learning for the first time that her husband and daughter were dead, which just didn’t hit the same way for me. I think her knowing deep down but not revealing it to the reader is part of why Anna worked so well as an unreliable narrator. In the movie, it felt like a cheap surprise.
Emily: It really did. And I think you’re right. In the book, it didn’t need to be a big shocking reveal to work because really it just let us into her trauma and her PTSD more. Talking to them was a way for her to cope, not a way for her to deny what happened. And in the end, talking to her husband and child is what rescued her, because they were encouraging her to fight back when she’d given up on herself. So yeah, I just think in general this was not handled well in the movie and I would have preferred it just be left out. Sorry to Anthony Mackie, who is one of many actors who is underused in this movie.
Susan: Speaking of actors, let’s talk about the cast and acting. First of all, I have to note that every time I see Gary Oldman in anything, I always have like five minutes of thinking, “Is that Gary Oldman? No, that’s not him. Wait, yes it is!” That happened here too.
Emily: I am not a fan of Gary Oldman. I really don’t understand why actors like Johnny Depp have gotten so much heat for assault/domestic violence allegations, and it’s nearly impossible to find articles that detail the Gary Oldman accusations. (Here’s one.) But personally, as someone who was a victim of domestic violence, I’m pretty sensitive to these things and I have difficulty rooting for people who have been accused of domestic violence. With all that being said, I have no idea why this part even needed to be played by someone like Gary Oldman. This character was barely in the movie, and it could have been anyone. This is going to be a running theme for me for all of these actors. Everyone was underused and poorly used.
Why
Susan: I’m living proof of people not being aware of accusations against Oldman because this is news to me. But, yikes. I totally agree though. Like why was he in this? And Julianne Moore? I saw a review that said she was doing something “a little too close to her 30 Rock accent” and, yeah.
Anyway, I thought Amy Adams was compelling to watch, as usual. I just always enjoy watching her, and the casting of Anna felt right. However, I felt like Adams and Fred Hechinger (Ethan Russell) were in two different movies. Amy Adams played this seriously, but Hechinger felt over the top to me, which honestly might not be a bad thing to lean into, especially as this movie had some big (almost out of place, aesthetically?) nods to Hitchcock.
Emily: Yeah, this movie was sort of more like what I was expecting the book to be in that it was a trashy thriller that was a bad rip-off of a Hitchcock movie. And, yes, there were plenty of homages to Hitchcock, but they were all pretty superficial Hitchcockian things (like voyeurism). Overall, the movie missed the general feel and (again) suspense of a good Hitchcock film. And yes, totally agree that Ethan and Anna felt like they were pulled from two different movies. I 100% blame the director for that. Amy Adams is always compelling, but (I sound like a broken record here) she also seemed misused/underused in this movie.
Susan: It’s weird that we’re with Anna almost the entire time, and yet, it feels like we still weren’t with her enough.
Yes, that might be it
Emily: Perception is such a huge thing in this movie (and in the book), so I want to talk about that a little. Namely, when I read the book, I felt for Anna and was on her side. Even though the agoraphobia could be frustrating at times, I felt frustrated because Anna was frustrated, and I got why she was the way she was. On the other hand, in this movie, I had a really hard time empathizing with Anna. In fact, I found her character almost unbearable. Do you agree? And if so, what do you think it was about the film’s portrayal of Anna that made her more difficult to feel empathy for?
Susan: I think what works so well about the book is that Anna has a very compelling voice. Because we’re in her head, we see Anna as she sees herself (and probably more as she truly is), and in the movie, I think we see her the way others see her. While we know she is an unreliable narrator in the book, we’re still more willing to go along with her and find out if she’s truly unreliable, or if she really saw what she thought she did. The answer is a little bit of both, but in the movie, our time is spent watching Anna rather than hearing from Anna herself. We lose her voice almost completely in the movie, and I think that’s why she’s harder to empathize with.
Emily: All of my questions about this movie all kind of boil down to one big question: why didn’t this work? No one is liking this movie. I didn’t like it much either. But why? At its core, it’s the same story. They didn’t make huge changes to the overall plot. And yet the movie version of this was so corny and the book was super compelling. Why?
Susan: I didn’t dislike it, but I think that’s just because I’d read it and had the extra context. I don’t think I’d have enjoyed it very much if I hadn’t read the book. Again, I think some of it has to do with voice. While the book is focused through Anna’s narration, the movie feels a little all over the place, despite being inside Anna’s home 99% of the time.
Emily: I wonder if, after the major failure of this film, we’re going to see the death of the domestic psychological thriller as a major film genre. It’s happened before with previous film trends. One movie really sets viewers (and studios) off on a craving for more similar content. In this case, that would be Gone Girl. And then the trend keeps going until finally a complete dud movie comes out (this one). Afterwards, studios are usually less likely to take a gamble on a genre that’s no longer a sure thing. Is that what’s going to happen here? Is this the end of the Gone Girl streak?
Susan: This does feel like the beginning of the end of the road for the “Girl” and “Woman” unreliable-narrator-domestic-psychological-thriller genre. Even as books, I’ve seen fewer and fewer of these done successfully in the last few years. Any final thoughts?
Emily: I just want to say that I do really love thrillers. Susan, I think you and I are the thriller lovers of the podcast. But I’ve been striking out with thrillers so far this year, both in film and in books. I’m not giving up on the genre probably ever, but I’m hoping that we get better stuff in the future. Just do better, collective thriller world. Especially because this movie had all the materials it needed to be a good movie. It had the star power. It had a legitimate director behind it. It had entertaining source material. I just want people to try and not rest on the fact that we’ll eat this shit up no matter how poorly constructed it was. Anyway. That is all I got.
Susan: I second everything you said. We’ll be back to critique the next domestic thriller, whatever that might be. Until then, don’t spy on your neighbors.
We apologize for not talking about this cute little fluff who did an excellent job and deserves a Pawscar Award.