There’s something… refreshing about this movie, and I mean
that in the worst way possible. Where other films usually take time for the
flaws within to really present themselves, The Woman In The Window almost seems
eager to get it all out in the open within the first five minutes. As Bruno
Delbonnel’s camera work glides across the house of Amy Adams’ Anna, a child
psychologist with agoraphobia, it lingers on a TV set playing a stuttering
slideshow of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. With how much older cinema gets
shown throughout, including a few more Hitchcock efforts, it gives this
inexorable feeling that I’m watching the result of someone who’s been stuck
inside for months with nothing but black-and-white flicks for company, and
decided to write a screenplay because they need something, anything, to
alleviate the cabin fever.
Of course, the actual genesis of this story is far
more complicated than that, to the point where it could take up the bulk of
this review all on its own (here’s a beat-by-beat breakdown of the author done by the New Yorker a couple years ago),
but that impression still lingers regardless. Not that this is the first modern
film to crib heavily from Rear Window, but this is a weirdly straight-forward
example of such, as if it’s trying to pre-empt critics and general audiences
pointing out such things. Then again, that ranks fairly low on my list of
priorities with this particular flick. I am far less sceptical of a story being
retold than I am of it being retold well. And to be brutally honest, this
isn’t Rear Window. Or Disturbia. Or even Bart Of Darkness. This film wishes
it could reach that level of genuine quality.
