I would think Amy Adams and Netflix would have been a match made in heaven. Amazing acting talent meets a streaming service with an unlimited budget: the great storytelling possibilities are endless. Maybe the DC stink has remained on Adams, because Hillbilly Elegy was a real turd burger, and The Woman in the Window isn’t that much better. Maybe Adams should join the MCU to get her mojo back? Black Widow could need a cousin or something…
Adams plays LB Jeffries. Kidding. She plays Anna Fox, an agoraphobic woman confined by fear to her New York apartment. Though mostly isolated, she has a few outlets: her downstairs neighbor David (Wyatt Russell) does a lot of the basic housework for her; her therapist (Tracy Letts, who also wrote the screenplay) meets with her once a week; she talks to her husband (Anthony Mackie) on the phone, since they’re divorced and he has to care for their daughter; and her new obsession is the Russell family: parents Allistair (Gary Oldman) and Jane (Julianne Moore), and son Ethan (Fred Hechinger), the new neighbors across the street. Struggling with alcoholism, boredom, and suicidal thoughts, Anna lets her imagination run wild. One night, she thinks she witnesses something terrible happen to the Russell’s, but when Detective Little (Bryan Tyree Henry) investigates, everything seems fine at home. Anna, however, can’t shake the feeling that something’s amiss.
Tracy Letts is an accomplished thespian of the stage, and Joe Wright, the director, blurs the lines between what is a play and what is a movie in his films. In watching The Woman in the Window, I think Amy Adams/Letts/Wright might have been better served doing this story on Broadway. Broadway’s confined setting can help sell the claustrophobia Anna is feeling better, and would make it easier for Adams to dial back her performance. Instead, we get the opposite: Wright and Letts opening up the story. There’s exactly one cool thing they do with that expanded scope in the middle of the movie (I’m Thinking of Ending Things did it MUCH better though), but otherwise, Wright and Letts resort to directorial flourishes to moviefy a script for a play, with mostly negative results.
But the biggest mistake in this story is that for too long The Woman in the Window can’t decide if it wants to be a glorified Lifetime movie or a searing psychological study of a damaged woman. As such, the people choosing a lane fare best: Gary Oldman is hilariously making himself an evil suspect, Julianne Moore is chewing on the scenes, and the relative unknown Fred Hechinger has lots of fun with his crazy part. On the other side, Bryan Tyree Henry is doing what he can to help Adams in her suffering, the same with Anthony Mackie’s voiceovers. Poor Amy Adams is stuck right in the middle of this tug of war, and as such, her performance is all over the place. At times she blows you away with well acted revelations that completely alter her emotional psyche. But then in the next scene she has to wail at the top of her lungs to the police about the “other woman” she saw while everyone looks at her crosseyed. As expected, Adams is much better as a real actor and not a hammy Liftetimer, but the movie is actually better when it goes crazy, especially that ludicrous ending.
Don’t go all Jennifer Lawrence on us Amy Adams! You haven’t even won your Oscar yet, you can’t let your movie choices go off the deep end until that gets done. This is why I like you revisiting Enchanted, get back to what you do best, and jump start your career again; Disney owns Marvel, so that should wipe off that DC stink from you.