The Woman in the House plays it too straight and becomes rather lifeless as a result

Remember in 2015 when Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig collaborated on the Lifetime movie A Deadly Adoption? This made-for-television movie was supposed to be seen as a comedy despite not being filmed like a comedy. Yeah, it was confusing, and audiences were understandably disappointed. They were expecting a Scary Movie-like take on the Lifetime brand and instead got, well, a Lifetime movie that just happened to star Ferrell and Wiig. The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window fits into a similar vein, which makes sense, considering Ferrell serves as an executive producer.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window season 1 review

On the one hand, The Woman in the House does take a more humorous approach to its subject matter—spoofing books like The Woman in the Window, The Girl on the Train, and The Woman in Cabin 10 and other psychological thrillers/mysteries in that vein—but it still plays it too straight to make a real impact. And the comedy is very hit or miss, with a tendency to miss more often than hit.

Kristen Bell stars as Anna Whitaker, a grieving divorcée struggling to come to terms with her daughter’s horrific death. She self-medicates with copious amounts of wine and regularly gets drunk while looking out her window, watching the neighbors and sipping from a goblet filled to the brim with alcohol.

Even though it has been three years since her daughter died, Anna still “sees” her at home. Since then, she divorced her husband, FBI forensic psychologist Douglas (Michael Ealy), and hasn’t really managed to get back on her feet. Oh, and she’s plagued by a horrific phobia of the rain that directly relates to her daughter’s death, meaning she’s unable to leave the house if there’s even a storm cloud brewing overhead. The only person Anna really has to depend on is her best friend Sloane (Mary Holland), who feels more or less useless in the overall season-long arc given how little Holland has to do.

Things change and get substantially more interesting for Anna when she gets a new neighbor in the house across the street in the form of a handsome widower named Neil (Tom Riley) and his adorable daughter Emma (Samsara Leela Yett). But while she starts obsessing over her neighbor, Anna witnesses a murder in his living room window. Or did she? Like the plot of The Woman in the Window, Anna is led to believe that nothing happened and the person she believes murdered is actually alive and well.

Did she imagine it all in a wine-addled daze, or is she being gaslit? On top of that, her handyman is all sorts of weird, her nosy neighbor Carol (Brenda Koo) is constantly causing problems for her, and there might be someone living in her attic. Or are those creepy noises just the house settling? Given all the messiness in her life, it makes sense that Anna starts imagining what life could be like if she and Neil fell in love and had a picture-perfect family, complete with chicken casserole made in her seemingly endless supply of identical dishes.

While it’s clear the writers and creators understand the overall psychological thriller genre and enjoy playing with the tropes and clichés we all anticipate, the problem is they don’t really do anything interesting with the story.

It’s irritating because there are a few moments in the show that are genuinely hilarious. Specifically, the entire backstory regarding how Anna’s daughter died is the kind of dark comedy I was expecting to get out of this show on a more consistent level. Everything involving the handyman Buell and the fact he has been fixing the same mailbox for what seems like forever is also a highlight, but other than that, the jokes that land are frustratingly far and few between.

Even more exasperating is that the show doesn’t seem to understand the jokes that are funny and the ones that get old fast. Some of them are repeated and dragged out ad nauseum to the point where you just want to scream, “Oh my god, we get it already!”

I think the crux of this show’s problem, like A Deadly Adoption, is it feels stuck in limbo between playing the genre straight and trying to lampoon its more farcical elements, leaving us with a rather tepid storyline that doesn’t go far enough in either direction to be genuinely entertaining.

On the plus side, it’s a short binge with just eight episodes running 25 to 30 minutes in length. Is it the worst way to spend an afternoon? No, especially if you’re a fan of the genre. It’s just unlikely that you’ll remember much of it afterward as it slides into the slipstream of mediocre shows that fail to take hold. And like its disorienting inability to pick a tone and stick to it, The Woman in the House isn’t great or terrible, but somewhere stuck in the middle.

Add The Woman in the House to your Netflix watchlist!

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window premieres Friday, January 28 on Netflix.