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The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window review – a bewilderingly bad spoof
Kristen Bell’s Netflix show is meant to mock psychological thrillers that aren’t often sent up – for great reason, it turns out. This is not amusing, it’s just awful
Let’s get the title out of the way first because it’s a silly one. Intentionally silly, though, which makes it OK. The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window (Netflix) – and don’t expect me to type that out in full again if you want any actual review in this review – is a mashup of psychological thrillers such as The Woman in the Window and The Girl on the Train. This is not a genre often parodied, and for good reason it turns out.
Anyway, you don’t need to be a 2010s thriller fan to guess the softly lampooned cliches that lie within. The woman on the edge who looks like she has never been within 10ft of any actual edge, the sexy suspenseful vibes, and the hot guy who may or may not be a murderer. What’s really creepy about this “darkly comedic”, “built to be binged” limited series is that its title is the only spoofy thing about it. Otherwise, TWITHATSFTGITW, starring and executive-produced by the usually funny Kristen Bell playing it bewilderingly straight, is not funny at all. Nor is it serious. It doesn’t seem to know what it is. A meta-spoof spoofing a stab at a spoof, perhaps? Ultimately – and I’ve watched all eight episodes – this tonal confusion makes it ludicrous at best and at worst disturbing. And not in the way creators Rachel Ramras, Hugh Davidson and Larry Dorf intended.
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