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Our The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window review reveals that this eight-episode series is a parody of the popular psychological thriller shows that have graced our television screens recently. It gets a bit of inspiration from shows such as The Woman in the Window and The Girl in the Train and rehashes these narratives while offering a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor.
The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is about Anne, a divorced woman who lost her daughter when a serial killer murdered and ate her. Her boring life is upended when she seemingly sees a woman being murdered in the house across the street. Unfortunately, she is an unreliable witness because she drinks heavily and often mixes alcohol with prescription medication, making her prone to hallucinations. She goes on a one-woman journey to try and prove that the woman, Lisa/Chastity, was murdered. At some point, she becomes the main suspect before the real murderer is revealed.
Read our The Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window review to find out how this series manages to poke fun at domestic thriller movies while still appreciating the genre.
What is The Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window about?
The Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window follows the story of Anna Whitaker, a housebound woman who is still grieving the gruesome death of her only daughter. According to her ex-husband, she has an overactive imagination, drinks too much, refuses to let go of the past, makes plans and cancels them, and doesn’t wear a jacket but complains that it’s cold. She also has a severe case of ombrophobia, a fear of rain, because it was raining on the day her daughter was killed. In the first episode, it is revealed that she keeps forgetting her daughter is dead and often sees her and even talks to her.
Positives of The Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window
While this series is a parody, it does have a few serious deliveries that make audiences momentarily forget that it is satirical. The theme song is a haunting piano cover of the nursery rhyme Rain, Rain go away, highlighting Anna’s paralyzing fear of rain. Most of the humor is subtle, and the main characters deliver it with deadpan sincerity. As part of its cheeky jab at the movies it’s trying to parody, Anna is often seen reading books with on-the-nose titles like The Woman across the Lake and The Girl on the Cruise.
As a parody, the Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window highlights how melodramatic and exaggerated scenes in psychological thrillers can be. For example, Anna’s daughter Elizabeth was murdered during “Take your child to work day” by a serial killer named Massacre Mike. Elizabeth’s father is a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI who was interviewing Massacre Mike, who had killed and eaten more than 30 people. He then left his daughter in the same room with this man and accidentally locked the door behind him.
In Episode 3, Detective Lane reveals how she almost killed Massacre Mike in a way that makes this upsetting scene quite funny. She recalls Massacre Mike’s failed polygraph test and delivers the line “Until the day he killed and ate your daughter” with a deadly seriousness that will give you a few giggles. The sincerity with which Anna herself narrates this event in a previous episode also adds to the humor.
Does The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window succeed as a parody?
The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window pokes fun at some of the ridiculous themes of the psychological thriller genre. The main characters in these movies often self-medicate with prescription drugs and alcohol. Anna may have a drinking problem and has a bowl on her kitchen counter that’s overflowing with corks from all the wine she drinks. She often fills her wine glass to the brim and mixes alcohol with prescription medication, despite her therapist’s warning that this might cause hallucinations.
Other scenes where the Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window makes fun of the absurdities in the psychological thriller genre include the presence of a creepy handyman who doesn’t really fix Anna’s mailbox and who also happens to be a rehabilitated killer. Also, the airline company can choose not to fly to any city on the West Coast until the following year.
During her amateur sleuthing, Anna discovers that her neighbor, Neil, was a suspect in the death of his ex-wife. She also discovers that he was also chaperoning a class when one of his daughter’s teachers died. This makes him her prime suspect until he reveals that he is actually an amateur ventriloquist who uses laughter to heal from the loss of his wife. At some point, Anna even suspects Lisa’s partner in crime, Rex, but he has an alibi. After Lisa’s body is found and the murder weapon is revealed to be a palette knife, Anna herself becomes the main suspect. At some point, she suspects the handyman to be the killer, only to walk into the house across the street to find that the real murderer is Neil’s 9-year-old daughter Emma.
Is the Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window worth streaming?
The Woman in the House across the Street from the Girl in the Window does not have any laugh-out-loud scenes or outright jokes. Instead, every line is delivered with a straight face. The premise of this series is that the psychological genre itself is the joke.
Therefore, it recreates these movies and dials up the silliness by about 5 percent to highlight the absurdity of these movies and shows. Anna delivers some of the silly lines with a straight face. For example, in episode 2, she visits her daughter’s grave and says she is “falling apart like a house of cards, like a sandcastle…, like a rickety chair, or an old jalopy…, I don’t know”. Even in the last episode, she continues to make fun of these shows by repeating the lines “(I feel) like I was hit by a Mack truck driven by a nine-year-old.” As a result, this show manages to be funny by being deadly serious.
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