‘Woman in the Window’ is, alas, a muddled mess
The girl isn’t gone. There’s one on the train, and there’s another in the window.
“Woman in the Window,” based on A.J. Finn’s 2018 best-seller, is the latest adaptation in a run on female-led thrillers that have gone from page to screen with their intriguingly vague titles intact. Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” kicked off a mini-craze that, in movie form at least, began promisingly. David Fincher’s adaptation — an engrossingly dark inquiry into marriage — is still the best of the bunch. But that’s not saying much considering the knockoffs that have followed.
Just as in Tate Taylor’s adaptation of “The Girl on the Train,” Joe Wright’s “Woman in the Window” is a seemingly made-for-the-movies tale that falls oddly limp in the transfer. These are all books that trade heavily on cinematic tropes and traditions, and none more so than the novel by Finn (real name Dan Mallory). The book’s blend of voyeurism and psychodrama scream movies. It’s baked right into both the book and film, with allusions here to Hitchcock, the Humphrey Bogart thriller “Dark Passage” and the very, very great ‘40s noir “Laura.”
That’s probably what attracted so much talent to “Woman in the Window,” which debuts Friday on Netflix. It stars Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Brian Tyree Henry and even finds room for Anthony Mackie in a part mostly heard over the phone. The script is by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts. The film is produced by Scott Rudin (his first released since renewed allegations of bullying and abusive behavior forced him to step back from moviemaking ).
All the ingredients are there. And yet “Woman in the Window,” which had a labored path to release, comes off as a pastiche of better films, with all the requisite shadows but none of the substance.
“Woman in the Window,” a Netflix release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for violence and language. Running time: 100 minutes.