Although Kristen Bell is always a delight, the Netflix thriller The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window isn’t as good as its premise. The 2022 series tells the tale of Anna Whitaker (Bell), a suburban woman who thinks her neighbor Lisa (Shelley Hennig) has been murdered.
Bell is a reliably strong onscreen presence, whether portraying the plucky teen detective on Veronica Marsor a morally complex woman on the creative sitcom The Good Place. But this thriller series isn’t one of her most popular projects, and when you’ve finished watching, it’s clear that it doesn’t deliver on its very cool idea.
Kristen Bell’s The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window Had A Fun Premise
Kristen Bell looking serious as Anna in The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window
If you’re a big thriller reader who also loves watching as many creepy and unsettling shows as you can, you were likely drawn in by the title of this Netflix show. It’s a parody of domestic thriller stories like The Woman in the Window and The Girl on the Train.
Essentially, any thriller book title that has the word “woman” or “girl” is part of the joke. The premise is cool, creative, and enjoyable… but the show itself isn’t great. While the lengthy title could have been confusing or a turn-off for some, it directly appeals to fans of the genre.
Since there are so many thriller tales set in sweet small towns where nothing bad is meant to happen or boring suburbia where every house looks the same, you really want The Woman in the House to stand out.
After all, an excellent premise is half the battle, and if you can deliver on it, then you’ll have an impressive show that people want to rewatch and tell all their friends and family about. Sadly, that wasn’t what happened here.
The Forgotten 2022 Netflix Thriller Became The Thing It Was Parodying
Kristen Bell as Anna sitting in a plane seat in The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window
Kristen Bell’s Netflix thriller should have been hilarious and clever. Instead, it’s a regular old thriller. It sets up the story, has a typical suburban location, reveals the killer, and calls it a day. There are no entertaining surprises or huge moments that stand out and make you gasp. The characters are tired tropes, from a snooty neighbor to a dogged detective.
The cliffhanger ending even feels cliché and expected, as Anna gets on a plane headed for New York City and thinks that something else has happened that she has to look into.
You might expect The Woman in the House… to feel like Scream, which mixes fear and humor smoothly. It would have been great to watch Anna investigate a murder while cracking intelligent jokes.Scream also has meta jokes about horror, which is why you love it. But Anna takes the mystery too seriously.
If the series had taken a page out of Scream‘s book, then it could have featured a particularly memorable and fun killer reveal. Every time you learn who the new Ghostfaces are, you’re creeped out by them, but you can’t help but laugh at their silly personalities and how, in the end, they’re not all that competent.
Scream works as a smart parody because it makes fun of horror genre tropes. Even just looking at the first movie from 1996, characters joke about being suspects, they run upstairs and not out the front door and away from the killer, and the film’s teenagers throw a huge party while there’s a murderer on the loose.
The big reveal at the end of The Woman in the House…is lackluster because it’s not funny. If it were really a parody, the conclusion would land better and make you laugh. Instead, when Anna finds out that Emma (Samsara Yett), the nine-year-old daughter of Neil (Tom Riley), murdered several people, including Lisa, this moment is grim and disturbing.
It’s not entertaining or fun to watch Anna and Emma battle each other, and it’s a reminder of how much more interesting the show could have been. Traditional thriller endings feature the big reveal of terrifying and violent killers, and the detective/hero/main character saves the day and evades death.
The ending follows that mainstream formula without anything fresh or creative. Emma may be a child, but she could definitely kill Anna. While the show might intend to poke fun at creepy child characters in horror or thriller movies, it’s not effective because there’s no actual humor here.
What Would Have Saved The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window
Kristen Bell as Anna looking confused in The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window
The Woman in the House… could have been compelling if it didn’t have so many melodramatic moments. When Anna suspects the repairman Buell (Cameron Britton) or fights with Emma, you feel like you’re watching a character in a soap opera, not what’s meant to be a clever parody.
It shouldn’t have felt like such a traditional thriller tale and should have picked apart why the genre is full of red herrings, false reveals, and suburban locations. You always understand what the Scream franchise is talking about, from “the rules” to final girls, and the movies are realistic yet silly. That blend of tones would have been perfect here.
The Netflix show also leans into Anna’s trauma over her failed marriage and losing her child, which takes away any possibility of humor. This makes you feel sympathy for her, so it feels important in that sense, but you can’t exactly giggle at anything she says or does.
You know Anna is using wine as a coping mechanism and focusing on Lisa’s murder to ignore her own problems. It would have been better if Anna hadn’t faced tragedy in the past. She could be a fun character who listens to true crime podcasts 24/7, and she herself could be a spoof of that hobby/interest.
Anna’s obsession with casseroles is another low moment. She makes several of them throughout the eight episodes, and when Emma throws one at her head in the series finale, it’s an off-putting image that is more perplexing than funny.
Ultimately, the series doesn’t work because it has such a niche premise. Sure, if you’re aware it’s supposed to make fun of thriller tropes, then you might smile a little bit. However, if you’re settling in to watch because you’re a fan of Kristen Bell’s other projects and not because you live and breathe the genre, then the title fails.
As you watch, you might even wonder why the show is called this in the first place. A Netflix series should have universal appeal, so that’s a big problem. Ultimately, The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window had a great idea behind it, but when you reach the end, you’ll wish you had laughed more.
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