Kristen Bell wanders through the aimless satire of Netflix’s The Woman In The House…
The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window is a contrived parody of psychological thrillers
TV Reviews Netflix
In theory, The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window is an ingenious premise. The long title is a witty wink to the genre it attempts to parody: psychological thrillers like 2016’s The Girl On The Train and 2021’s The Woman In The Window. Unfortunately, this Netflix comedy is hardly inventive. In fact, it’s quite tedious.
The show provides no insight on how this particular update on Rear Window-type mysteries—a traumatized, alcohol-dependent woman turns into an amateur sleuth when no one believes she witnessed a murder—became compelling viewing. There’s a glaring lack of incisive commentary and comedic risks. The Woman In The House… just rehashes narratives of the films it is trying to lampoon with barely any derisive humor or dramatic flair. It often feels like the show forgets it’s a parody.
With eight half-hour episodes, the series drags out the suspense for double the length of the Amy Adams-led The Woman In The Window, the movie most directly referenced, but there’s no justification for the extra runtime. Stuck in the middle of being a dark comedy and a thriller, it delivers a humdrum story on both fronts.
The unreliable narrator here is Anna Whitaker (Kristen Bell), a divorced and wine-obsessed artist who spends her time drinking and reading crime novels while sitting by the window and staring outside. Her monotonous life is upended when a handsome single father, Neil (Tom Riley), moves into the house opposite Anna’s with his young daughter, Emma (Samsara Leela Yett). Anna begins integrating herself into their world, at least until the arrival of Neil’s prim air hostess girlfriend, Lisa (Shelley Hennig).
Anna’s instant attraction to Neil and bond with Emma is a Band-Aid for her grief over losing her own family. Her child, Elizabeth (Appy Pratt), was killed in a reckless accident, which led to Anna splitting from her husband, Douglas (Michael Ealy). Now, the show takes a hilarious swing in revealing how Elizabeth died—as upsetting as it might be—which is made even funnier by Bell’s sincere voiceover of the event. It sets the bar for the kind of amusing, ridiculous stuff The Woman In The House will deliver. Only, there’s no such payoff.
Most of the jokes are subtle and scattered, laying quietly in the background while the episodes progress in a relatively straightforward manner: The epitaph on Elizabeth’s headstone keeps changing every time Anna visits. The trashy mysteries Anna reads have titles like The Woman Across The Lake and The Girl On The Cruise. These cheeky one-offs never turn into something more.
Anna frequently mixes her alcohol with prescription pills and has hallucinations of Elizabeth. She has also isolated herself from all her neighbors and friends, except for Sloane (Mary Holland). So, when she witnesses a murder taking place at Neil’s house one night, no one really believes her. Anna begins to question her own sanity, as well as her impression of Neil, which was shaped by a quick infatuation.
To prove what she saw, Anna sets off on a solitary mission to uncover Neil and Lisa’s past. The Woman In The House deploys plenty of unnecessary twists and turns from this point, detours that slow down the plot of an already boring mystery. There are usual suspects and red herrings, including Neil, Lisa’s ex-boyfriend Rex (Benjamin Levy Aguilar), and Anna’s carpenter Buell (Cameron Britton), who has been working on fixing her mailbox for years now.
The Woman In The House offers some physical comedy through Anna’s ombrophobia (fear of rain), akin to Anna Fox’s agoraphobia in The Woman In The Window. She crumbles when she’s caught in a downpour, so naturally, the chaotic conclusion occurs on a rainy night. Bell is a proven comedic force, but even her impeccable timing and delivery can’t save the uneven script. The show’s breakout star is Yett, who, in her first series regular role, holds her own opposite Bell. Despite the strong performances, The Woman In The House is nothing more than a wasted opportunity to poke fun at, while still appreciating, successful thrillers.
121 Comments
didn’t even read the article, but I just wanted to say I love the show title. I love Eleanor. and I will watch this.
This sounds like a show that Tahani would make Eleanor watch“It’s one of the longest running Netflix comedies! There are EIGHT episodes!”
Who is Eleanor?
Eleanor Shellstrop, Bell’s character in The Good Place.
My wife, Eleanor…
And your dog Fala?
“You understand the dog? ‘COO-COOO’!”
And I’m EL KABONG!
“Veddy good, sir!”
That’s forkin’ right.
A bad character from a bad show
Who is Eleanor?It’s what they call Veronica Mars. X0X0
Im 9npy on episode 4 but I think it’s great. Reminds meof a less zany David Wain show.
dang I had no idea it was a parody from the trailer, I was just looking forward to some cheese. Sounds like the show isn’t sure which it is either.
You may have some cheese.
It may be satire. I’ve never been clear on the distinction. Have at it, commentariat!
i didn’t realize it was a series, seems insane to not make it a movie.
Yeah. “The long title is a witty wink to the genre it attempts to parody: psychological thrillers like 2016’s The Girl On The Train and 2021’s The Woman In The Window.”OK, I’m listening…“With eight half-hour episodes”NOPE.
at least with something like ‘kevin can go fuck himself’ there was an interesting meta-narrative going so it made sense to do it as a series…this feels like it would completely run out of steam after 2 episodes.
In the third she could look out of a different window.
I can’t believe I haven’t learned to compensate for Kinja STILL fucking up links.
If you don’t just mean that you keep forgetting to do it, the easiest way to prevent it is to click on the hypertext in the your post while editing it, and it will give you an option to remove the link. Also obviously never try to link via hypertext on your own, just put the web address directly in.Maybe some hotshot tech wizard in LA will fix it in a few months. Whoever they end up hiring will probably have to work two jobs to make ends meet anyway so if someone can rewrite press releases snidely and code, they can work 80 hour weeks at the office in dual roles.
Thanks, I truly didn’t know what to do…also I forgot there’s a problem. I’m astonished that anyone can fuck up copy/paste at all, but I’ve seen other combinations of stuff where such things go wrong.
Shift+Ctrl+V is also a decent habit to get into it (ought to) strip any formatting out and paste plaintext.
Eh, I’m still not adapting to Kinja’s sometimes an upvote, sometimes no, and to be honest I don’t think Kinja knows itself either. You just went from 1-6 stars here, probably on a glitch.
So, uh, y’know, don’t be too hard on yourself.
A lot of Netflix series like these feel like movie ideas where they threw a bit of extra money at the makers and said “can you make it a bit longer?”
⇧ exactly!!
Even the Wayans had the sense to make “Don’t Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood” an 89 minute film.
Witty is already stretching it.
My thought was insane not to make it a five-minute sketch. I think even a movie length version would drain all the funny out of a moderately funny premise.
yeah i mean ultimately this should have been a funny or die sketch 12 years ago.
Really, it seems similar to the Only Murders in the Building which was a show. Seems like an execution/writing issue as most things are.
That was the show I thought of when reading this review. It has a lot of the same hallmarks – meta-commentary on its genre, amateur sleuths who are in way over their heads, a cast of likely suspects – but it handles all those elements deftly so that you keep wanting to see the next episode.
only murders wasn’t really a satire though right? the comedy came from the fact that they were bumbling losers, but it existed in a fairly real world.
It felt like a satire of people into true crime podcasts.
https://www.theonion.com/woman-starting-netflix-movie-horrified-to-realize-it-tv-1847902595
That glass of wine is pretty funny
I like it when shows realize that Glass Of Wine is not a personality trait.
*Game of Thrones casually whistles by*
“The Glass of Wine is kind of its own character.”
Paul Giamatti is swimming in there!
Looks like one of those that will hold a full bottle. My wife received one as a gag gift a few years ago, which was funny until we realized it wasn’t that much bigger than the ones we used on a typical Saturday night.
The best glass of wine gag is still Amy Schumer’s Friday Night Light’s parody.
Nice to see her cutting down while she’s pregnant.
It’s got nothing on the actual glasses of wine Kerry Washington partook from on Scandal.
Well at least she has a wineglass almost as big as her head to wander with.
The title is in line with other dumb parodies like this one.
And this one (from the year 2000):
Don’t Be A Menace To The Woman In The Window While You’re Drinking Your Wine From A Bucket
Wow, what a cast!
I 100% do not want to see this and do not think it’s funny, but Scary Movie is primarily parodying Scream, which is already a horror parody, so this is not a new problem.
Dear god, why is this a SHOW? And not a ninety-minute feature? I think the genre could use some takedown, but what a horrible miscalculation!
Didn’t this genre already get a satire in Search Party? Sure I’m only halfway through the first season but it sure as shit feels like one.
I’m surprised to hear this is so bland, the creators were also behind Mike Tyson Mysteries, which admittedly ran out of steam after a while but the first couple of seasons were often very funny and unpredictable.
Beginning to think I only really liked Kristen Bell on Veronica Mars. Please don’t tell me she was great on The Good Place. I did not care for that show.
…………Frozen?
No, I’m fresh.
If you haven’t seen it you need to check out an NBC show called The Good Place, she is great on it.
Why not?
Enterprise Rent-a-Car ads?
The Lifeguard?
Deadwood. Though it only takes a couple eps before her character starts smell a bit off.
Deadwood. Though it only takes a couple eps before her character starts smell a bit off.
I can’t stand her or her husband so I’m feeling a bit of glee at this not being good. Yes I am a miserable person.
I enjoyed The Good Place well enough but I don’t know if I’d say Bell was great on it. She was good. But she was never as funny as her co-stars. She’s playing the straight man role, so she’s not given as much opportunity to be funny, but she’s also just… not as funny IMO.
She was great on the Good Place, which is a great show.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall?
Have you seen the Good Place? She’s great in it!
I’m sorry if this is a dumb comment but, didn’t humanity agree that Woman in the Window was already hilarious because its a car crash disaster of a movie? Isn’t this like making a parody of like, Troll 2?
Or making a sentimental comedy about the Room?
HA! What a story, MiFroChi!
That’s the other issue with this. It’s a spoof of an entire genre but they picked the least watched and worse one to center it on?
Not to mention its a blatant remake, or rip off if I’m being less generous, of Rear Window the peak of the genre.
None of these will ever be as weird and unsettling to me as the shot-by-shot 1998 remake of Psycho. Only film I’ve ever intuited was a shot-by-shot remake, while watching it, without having been told beforehand, or having seen the original all the way through (I was 21).Just something about it. Everything was off. It almost didn’t feel like a movie, it was more like one of those VHS art exhibits from… well I guess the late 90s.
When did you see the shot for shot Psycho remake? When it came out every single talking point was how it was a shot for shot remake. Thyat was the whole purpose of the movie.
Psycho came out at the cinema in Australia in early 1999 – and this trailer certainly doesn’t mention shot for shot, or even really make it clear that it’s a remake. It does manage to spoil the first twist of the film by all-but-saying Norman Bates is a crazy murderer though…
Why didn’t I know it was a shot-for-shot remake? I didn’t have permanent home internet (free AOL CDs yay!). Didn’t read film mags or blogs… or BBSs or Usenet…
A mate an I used to go to the pictures every Tuesday with no plan, and see whatever looked interesting. Highlights included Starship Troopers and Fight Club. Lows… well the absolute nadir was definitely Jane Austen’s Mafia. Psycho was probably pretty solidly in the middle. Lower middle.
Fair enough. I guess I would’ve read about it being a Shot-for-shot remake in Entertainment Weekly or something.
If shitting on Woman in the Window is the order of the day, then they should have just made one of these kind of movies about the actual guy who wrote the novel, who if this article is to be believed sounds like an absolute fucking psychopath himself. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense-novelists-trail-of-deceptions
Oh yeah the films laughably bad but the story behind it? It rivals Catch Me If You Can for sheer holy shit a person did that gut reaction.
There are a lot of problems with this, starting with the fact that it might be hard to sustain an 86 minute feature (like they used to have before Hollywood decided every theatrical release needed to be 120 minutes plus), let alone a whole series. I watched the preview, and the only jokes that “land” are the fact that she drinks giant glasses filled to the brim with wine, and the title.But more importantly, these sort of books and movies had already become parodies of themselves. The Woman In The Window, notoriously, was written by a guy who just basically copied every cliche from this genre imaginable, and passed it off as something original. The movie adaptation, intentionally or not, kicked the camp factor up to about 11. There’s just really no where left to go here.
I know you probably meant it somewhat hyperbolically, but I was curious whether theatrical releases really are mostly over 120 minutes these days. The first thing that occurred to me was that movies released near the end of the year are more likely to be prestige pics and are therefore more likely to be longer. I did a quick spot check using Box Office Mojo’s data and found that of the 27 top box office movies from yesterday, the mean runtime is 127 minutes, while of the 27 top box office movies from April 16, 2019, the runtime was 108 minutes. It seems unlikely that Hollywood decided in the last two years to drastically increase the runtimes of its movies; obviously more analysis would be necessary. But I do remember seeing a chart in Entertainment Weekly something like 25 years ago complaining that movies then were getting really long (over 2 hours, can you believe it?!) which leads me to believe that there probably hasn’t been much of an overall mean increase since then.
(For the record, of the top 27 from yesterday, 17 were 120+ min and the rest were under 120 min; of the set from 2019, only 6 were 120+.)
Technically correct, best kind, etc.
I guess if you’re going to risk covid to see a movie they want to make sure you get your money’s worth!
There’s just really no where left to go here.Except for: A junior buying agent who works at a major publishing company rips off the plot of the movie, changesthe names and the city its set in, adds some bad sex scenes, and re-titles it something like Deadly Outlooks. Then his senior VP puts it up into a bidding war, he’ll get a $3m advance, and most annoying of all the book will be promoted to the top of the bestseller lists and make its advance back in six weeks.Then the expose on Medium about how the guy was faking brain cancer.Then blessed silence.
Okay this is a minor thing but I do think it’s important to distinguish between parody and satire. Parody is the broad genre of doing a comedy version of X, while satire is more specifically trying to make a point about something or another, it’s meant to be critical and incisive and so forth.
60 years of “A MAD satire” muddled that distinction, I think.
MAD is only 60 years old? Feels pre-Carolingian..
Alfred E Newman was King of the Franks!
Coming up on its 70th anniversary (#1 was October 1952), but also it ceased publication in 2018.
I saw some kind of Mad super special in the grocery store about a week ago, so I guess they’re still keeping up the tradition of publishing repackaged material.
Also, there are fewer porn satires. I checked.
But did she subscribe?
is this meme of the year now?
Well, that’s the show’s central mystery. You’ll have to watch to find out!
The problem with Peak TV is that people don’t know how to make movies anymore. Just make this a fucking movie! It would be way easier!
At least it’s a break from Bell and her husband sharing awful stories on their podcast to tell us they’re just like us.
It’s his podcast, she’s in maybe 3 episodes.
I came late to the Kristen Bell party – didn’t realise how great she was until ‘The Good Place’, though she did well with a poorly written character in ‘Heroes’ – so it’s a shame that it seems like her talents are wasted here. The premise sounds like a great fit for her if it were well-executed.
I avoided The Good Place for so long because she pulls the stupidest faces in all the promo material. She looks like Kelly Ripa took (more) Xanax
It’s more cute than funny, imo.
Then have you not watched Veronica Mars? You definitely need to, if not!
Northanger Abbey is right there. Jane Austin already did a great version of this parody. Someone really needs to make a Clueless style modern update where the lead character is obsessed with this type of trashy thriller (or true crime podcasts, either could work).
Northanger Abbey is definitely a satire, not a parody. This is important for reasons.
Satire exaggerates specific elements of something to make a point of its own, while parody is just “this thing but with comedy”. Do I have that straight? Like Colbert Report is satire but Weekend Update is parody
Apparently satire was originally supposed to try to effect social change using humour but I assume they gave that up as a lost cause in the 1950s.
God Kristen Bell is a babe.
Watch Search Party instead…
I don’t know, it seems pretty damn funny to me.
I love the idea of satirizing the domestic psychological thriller, but where do you go? The underlying premise of the genre is “we don’t believe women” and the books are mostly about whether or not we should believe a woman’s perceptions. That’s just… not prime comedy material unless you go really dark and really biting.
I literally did not realize that this show was supposed to be a parody/comedy…..
Aside from the title, you’d have no idea this was supposed to be a comedy. Couldn’t be less funny if it tried.
Unfuckingbelievable!! I binged this “series” and there’s NO FUCKING ANSWER!!! It just stops!! For what? The answers to the mystery NEXT YEAR!?!? Jesus christ this was an already overlong parody to a known thing and they wanna treat it like it’s fuckin LOST? FUCK YOU!
LOL you’re kidding! this is hilarious.
I fully appreciate the passion you put into this. I would have probably felt the same but luckily, I’m not gonna watch it now.
Um no? It does solve its mystery in the last episode. But also sets up another one (either as a parody of the trope or in hopes of setting up a second season which will likely never happen).
I’ve just watched the first three episodes despite the negative review (maybe I just like Bell, okay?). I’d say there are are about 3 or 4 good laughs per episode. Is that enough to make it worth it? Maybe not. Only Murders in the Building it isn’t. If you haven’t seen that watch it instead. But if you want a mildly funny show featuring Bell this isn’t as terrible as it may sound.
I liked it. Though the comedy was so broad, (spoiler-adjacent) I thought it would end with Bell playing Penney Spencer Wright from Season 3 of Ricky Gervais’ After Life.
Anyone else get a “Identity” (with John Cusack) vibe? The whole time I kept thinking that all of these characters were all just other patients in the insane asylum and all of this stuff was in her head. I never got the joke that it was all built on parody. SMH