The Reel Review
Amy Adams stars in this crime mystery about a boozy, pill-popping agoraphobic who starts to question her own sanity after witnessing from her window what she thinks may have been the murder of a neighbor across the street. It is based on the controversial 2018 bestseller by Dan Mallory (a.k.a. AJ Finn).
Despite its similar initial premise, this is not really a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic Rear Window. If anything, it is closer to his less popular 1954 Barbara Stanwyck thriller Witness to Murder. There are many problems with this story, however. The agoraphobic angle is barely touched upon and anyone paying even half attention to the dialogue will quickly get the gist of what is going on.
Visually, the film looks great. Director Joe Wright (Darkest Hour, Atonement) loads it up with lots of clever, film noirish camerawork from cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (Darkest Hour, Big Eyes). Adams’ increasingly unstable character is compelling although the impressive ensemble cast – Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anthony Mackie and Wyatt Russell – is relegated to little more than cameo roles. In the third act, the threadbare plot goes completely off the rails, culminating in a ridiculous, infuriatingly silly ending that makes us wish we had just closed the curtains on that window and walked away.
REEL FACTS
• This film has been delayed twice – first, from 2019 to 2020 for reshoots after the film reportedly left test audiences confused, and again from 2020 to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Oscar winners Julianne Moore (Still Alice) and Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour) also worked together in 2001’s Hannibal.
• Dan Mallory, who wrote 2018’s “The Woman in the Window” under the pseudonym AJ Finn, was exposed as a bullshit artist in a 2019 article in The New Yorker for lying extensively to further his career, including lies that he earned a doctorate from Oxford, that he had suffered from a brain tumor and from cancer, and that he lost his mother to cancer and brother to suicide. Both are alive.
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