Critics close curtains on The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window, Netflix's psychological thriller starring Amy Adams, has failed to thrill critics.

The movie, directed by Joe Wright, is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by AJ Finn.

It sees Adams play Dr Anna Fox, a psychologist with agoraphobia who struggles to convince her neighbours and police that she witnessed a murder.

Reviewers have called the film adaptation "thinly sketched" and "a muddle", but also "effectively moody".

The feature, which co-stars Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore and Anthony Mackie, was originally made by 20th Century Fox and set for release in October 2019, but was sent back for re-writes and a re-edit following audience reaction at test screenings.

After Fox was bought by Disney, the film was shunted around the schedules, before being delayed due to the pandemic, and eventually sold to Netflix.

Now that it's finally arrived, The Guardian couldn't wait to switch it off - awarding the film a meagre two stars.

Benjamin Lee wrote that Adams "gives a flat performance as an agoraphobe unravelling a dull mystery" in Wright's "cursed mis-step" of a movie.

Her character is "thinly sketched" and "flatly acted by Adams", Lee added, calling it "another off-key performance from an actor still weathering the horror of last year's heinous Hillbilly Elegy".

"She leans into screechy histrionics, as does a wincingly hammy Oldman (a scene of the pair trying to loudly overact over each other is one of the film's many low points), and what stings is that arguably her greatest work to date was in Sharp Objects, playing another tortured addict in another adaptation of a hit thriller, a turn so accomplished it's hard to believe we're now watching the same person."

Vanity Fair tended to agree, declaring the "ponderous" piece to be "doomed" on arrival.

"The movie is a pallid, dull slog of bad acting and worse storytelling," wrote Richard Lawson, who stressed - with a cruel pun - that it was "not worth staying in for".

"The story is a muddle, clunkily paced and building toward an entirely unearned (and uninteresting) twist reveal," he added.

If Wright intended to evoke the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, Lawson continued, he was ultimately unable "muster any of that film's claustrophobic tension".

"It's both pretentious and programmatic, built in predictable beats and offering no new spin on any of its hoary forms."

Elsewhere, film score aggregator Rotten Tomatoes said: "The Woman in the Window will have audiences closing their curtains".

By contrast, The Hollywood Reporter found merit in the adaptation of AJ Finn's novel, and indeed Adams' performance, yet they were still left wanting more.

"Effectively moody but offering frustratingly skin-deep chills, The Woman in the Window underestimates its hero in more than ways than one," offered Sheri Linden.

"A work of snack-food readability but little substance, the novel is seasoned with skilful misdirection that can't hide how ultrabasic-bordering-on-threadbare its core psychology is," she continued.

"The movie, which ups the violence a bit, ends on a slightly different but no less wanting note, and never matches the nuance and intensity of Adams' performance, with its fully alive and unpredictable guardedness, prevarication and naked emotion."

Linden, however, did state that the idea of a seemingly unhinged woman struggling to be believed remains "a viable dramatic trope, for painfully obvious reasons" in today's society.

Time Magazine appeared to enjoy the film, regardless of the consensus. They called it an "effective agoraphobia thriller with a chilly uptown sheen".

"Wright shapes it [the book] into a modern gothic tale of obsession, voyeurism and possible madness, as prismatic and furtive as a leaded-glass window," wrote Stephanie Zacharek.

"The picture is enjoyable not so much for its twisty plot - which, even if you haven't already read the book, is essentially pretty guessable - as for its artful dedication to its own highly theatrical, drapes-drawn sombreness."

She made the point that it is "one heck of a movie to release" at a time when many people are attempting to leave their homes for the first time in a year.

"Will Anna ever be able to bring herself to go outside again?" she asked. "That's the real suspense of The Woman in the Window, and giving yourself over to it is much more enjoyable than obsessively refreshing Twitter and Instagram, untrustworthy windows if ever there were any, as you wait for the world to restart."

The Woman in the Window is on Netflix now.

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