INSIDE OUT (THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW)

 

On paper, 'The Woman in the Window' must have seemed like a great idea 

An adaptation of a 2018 New York Times bestselling thriller by AJ Finn, the Scott Rudin production was brought to the big screen by 'Atonement' and 'Darkest Hour' director Joe Wright 

Tony Award winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts of 'August, Osage County' fame was tasked with adapting the novel and also landed a part.

The cast was led by Amy Adams, with Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore, Anthony Mackie and Jennifer Jason Leigh also on board.

What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, it seems.

Finn, whose real name is Daniel Mallory, was accused of plagiarism after shooting wrapped on the movie in an article in The New Yorker.

Not only did the article allege he borrowed heavily from the 1995 thriller 'Copycat' but also that he fabricated his own life story.

Test screenings of the film also went terribly, with Letts replaced by Tony Gilroy who was asked to rewrite chunks of the screenplay for reshoots.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross had been lined up to provide rhe score for Wright's movie but the pair bailed out to work with Jon Batiste on the Oscar winning music for 'Soul'.

Danny Elfman came on board instead.

With the film due to be released in cinemas in May 2020, 20th Century Fox opted following Covid delays and poor advance reaction to sell the rights to Netflix.

Prior to its release on the streaming service, there was another public relations disaster in April.

The notoriously hot tempered Scott Rudin was alleged in the Hollywood Reporter to have bullied and physically attacked members of staff who subsequently signed non disclosure agreements.

Rudin subsequently announced plans to step back from a number of Broadway productions and his name is expected to be removed from a number of movies.

So it would be a bit of an understatement to say it's been a bit of a nightmare for 'The Woman in the Window'.

With difficulties like these, Wright's film lives up to all your worst fears.

'The Women in the Window' is frankly a batty, hysterical, wannabe Hitchcock thriller that is about as much fun as tooth extraction.

In fact, it may even be worse.

How could they get it so wrong?

Amy Adams plays Anna Fox, a child psychologist, who like Sigourney Weaver's psychologist in Jon Amiel's 1995 thriller 'Copycat', is an agoraphobic.

Anna lives with her cat in her New York apartment, with a tenant, Wyatt Russell's David living downstairs.

She gets her food, drink and medication delivered to her door and is being treated by Tracy Letts' psychiatrist Dr Landy who is trying to encourage her to take steps into the street.

Confined to her brownstone Manhattan apartment, Anna spends her time drinking wine, mixing it with her meds, falling asleep in front of the telly watching old movies and spying on her neighbours.

She also has lots of conversations with her husband, Anthony Mackie's Ed Fox and their young daughter, Mariah Bozeman's Olivia who are no longer living with her.

As she peers out the window, Anna takes great interest in a family who have just moved in across the street, the Russells who have arrived from Boston.

Anna observes from her window the father, Gary Oldman's Alistair Russell's tendency to fly off the handle.

When the Russells' twitchy teenage son Fred Hechinger's Ethan calls round to introduce himself, he lets slip that he comes from an abusive home and she offers to help, giving him her phone number if he needs it.

This impression that Alistair is short tempered is further forged when Ethan's mom, played by Julianne Moore, calls round to see Anna and bonds with her over a glass of wine.

Later, Anna is horrified when she witnesses Ethan's mom being stabbed in the apartment opposite, only for the police to dismiss her claims as the ranting of a mad woman 

Not only that but Alistair also vigorously disputes her claim that his wife Jane has been murdered, with Jennifer Jason Leigh appearing and claiming she is Jane.

Wright, Letts and Gilroy clearly aspire to creating a clever, disorientating, twisty thriller that leaves you reeling and questioning the sanity of its heroine.

What you get instead is a screechy, cackhanded attempt at a Hitchcockian thriller whose events play out over the course of a week.

Wright doesn't just wear his Hitchcockian influences on his sleeve, he repeatedly beats his audience over the head with them.

A still of Jimmy Stewart in 'Vertigo,' is frozen on Anna's TV screen at the start of the filmand we also get a snatch of 'Spellbound'.

The staircase shot from 'Vertigo' inevitably pops up..

But the most obvious nods are to Hitchcock's 'Rear Window,' with Adams watching the drama unfold in the apartment opposite with the action framed by its windows.

Wright even recreates the famous image of Stewart's  character LB Jefferies using his camera to snoop on his neighbours.

There's also a threatening phone call.

However none of the action in Wright's movie is as gripping or clever as Hitchcock's classic 

Hitchcock brilliantly used the curios in the apartments opposite Jeffries' to parody Hollywood genres and expose cinemagoing as an act of voyeurism.

'The Woman in the Window' has no such pretensions 

Rather than having several subjects she spies on, Anna is confined to focussing on just one family.

Adams spends most of the movie, moping around the place as if she is in 'The Girl on the Train' - ranting and raging rather irritatingly about the terrible things happening in the apartment opposite.

She is so whiny, you can understand why the other characters switch off.

Oldman is terribly hammy as Alistair Russell, while Moore gives an oddly disjointed performance.

Hechinger fares little better with a part that should keep you guessing whether he is genuinely awkward or a Norman Bates style figure.

Jason Leigh has barely enough moments in the film to make an impression.

Russell, Mackie and Letts also struggle, while Brian Tyree Henry makes the biggest impression as a kind hearted detective.

Wright certainly delivers a handsome film, with impressively lit shots by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel and striking production design from Kevin Thompson.

But you can wrap a turkey up in a handsome bow and it still will look like a turkey.

That's what 'The Woman in the Window' is - a big, fat, gobbling turkey that tastes of fish.

('The Woman in the Window' was made available for streaming on Netflix on May 14, 2021)

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