Joe Wright Falters with Netflix Thriller “Woman in the Window” (2021)

Known for his handsomely produced period pieces, director Joe Wright proves so wrong at the helm of a modern-day Hitchcockian thriller. A pleasant enough but wildly uneven and ultimately unsatisfying popcorn thriller, Wright’s The Woman in the Window (C) is a genre exercise occasionally uplifted by a committed central performance by a game Amy Adams as an agoraphobic therapist who notices something is going down with the brownstone family across the way. Nearly every supporting actor in the film – particularly Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore as the new neighbors – is wasted in roles not worthy of their talents, and the director tosses in handsome production colors and strange twists and transitions to patch up his dramatically inert house of cards. Adams consistently toils to try to make the film work and is particularly good in sequences opposite Wyatt Russell as a mysterious tenant and Brian Tyree Henry as an investigator. The film can’t decide if its tone is genuine suspense or campy shtick, especially evident in its unhinged final act. Neither scary nor dramatic enough to add up to much, the film’s unreliable narrator turns out to be its director.

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