*Warning: major spoilers ahead*
There's a genre that's become grossly overdone in the last few years that I like to call: "Woman Struggling with Substance Abuse Tries to Solve a Murder, But Also Wonders if She Might Be Losing Her Mind." Just think of the 2016 thriller The Girl on the Train or the Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively-starring A Simple Favor.
Well now it seems we've got a brand-new addition to the canon: The Woman in the Window. This psychological thriller from Netflix stars Amy Adams as Anna Fox, a child psychologist who is dealing with a case of agoraphobia after a bad car accident. Because Fox is afraid to leave her home, she picks up a hobby of spying on her neighbors—specifically the family that moved in across the street—which leads to a series of horrifying events.
The window-spying plotline has been used in movies ranging from Hitchcock's Rear Window to the 2007 thriller Disturbia, and while this movie follows closely in its predecessors' footsteps, it doesn't tread much new ground. However, The Woman in the Window did leave me thinking long after I finished it, mainly because it is puzzling for so many reasons.