Anna Fox (Amy Adams) is a child psychologist who lives secluded and medicated in a huge multi-level house in Manhattan. She struggles with depression and cannot overcome the agoraphobia that afflicts her. She likes spying on her neighbors, especially a family that has recently moved into the apartment across the street and whose members she will begin to interact with.
Director Joe Wright and his screenwriter have set out to rehash several suspense classics (by Hitchcock, De Palma and Polanski) and try to combine them (the film, in turn, is based on a best seller). The most direct model (beyond the obvious one that is Rear Window) for all the cites it combines is a Brian De Palma film that I will not reveal. But while he reinvents what he somehow cites in that film (two Hitchcock classics), Wright remains on the surface of each of his models since they function only as shells or formal and narrative resources and not as re-readings. To classify The Woman in the Window as a tribute to those classics is to use a term that is too big for it.
Also, when insanity creeps in to enable any narrative license and play with the point of view of the story and the viewer, a script can suffer and jeopardize credibility and empathy with the characters if it is not solid. In this case, the narrative knot is that Fox (and we with her) is a witness to a crime. But then the story makes us doubt, misplacing our point of view as spectators. This would not be bad if the script was consistent and did not engage in certain manipulation maneuvers.
On the other hand, there is some theatrical dynamics in the story, to the extent that aspects of its protagonist are slowly revealed that explain her present and round out her identity. Let’s say that the house is also the protagonist of the story and the director knows how to use it well, also giving away some beautiful frames. Danny Elfman’s music is at times reminiscent of the classics that are being quoted.
The solvent and impressive cast does what they can and significantly, one of the best moments of the film is a very calm and natural one shared by Amy Adams and Julianne Moore (in the role of her new neighbor).