Arriving almost two years after it was originally slated to hit theaters, Wright’s “The Woman in the Window” is not cursed, instead, something far worse: boring. A stripped-down script does away with every element that makes Anna (Adams) sympathetic or credible. With a starry cast and a multi-million-dollar budget, the movie not only failed the audiences’ expectations but also the productions. The movie, which stars Amy Adams as a hard-drinking agoraphobe who believes that she witnessed a murder from the window of her Harlem townhouse, is cut off from any wider significance. Anna, who has not ventured outside her house for 10 months, regularly converses with only a handful of people through phone calls and in-person gatherings. Among these are her scruffy downstairs tenant, therapist, her husband, and their 8-year-old daughter.

Anna’s perennial solitude is interrupted when the Russell family moves across the street, piquing her interest. Soon, the Russell’s’ teenage son Ethan makes his way to Anna’s doorstep to visit. He seems harmless enough, but soon afterward, his mother, Jane, shows up and provides even more insight into the family. She is quite different from her husband as she is edgy, sports a couple of tattoos, and swears like a sailor. Anna and Jane continue the day by bonding over being moms, and being stuck in what seems like tough, unforgiving circumstances. Because this is the closest thing to a friend that Anna has had in a while, Anna becomes attached, or dare say obsessed. A few days later, Anna looks out the window and sees an argument between Jane and Alistair. Eventually, the argument turns into something more extreme as Anna sees Jane being stabbed to death. Jolted into a panic, she searches her house desperately for her cell phone. However, when Anna reports this incident to the police, she is dismissed as a delusional, pill-addicted liar and earns the scorn of Alistair and his son Ethan and the “real” Jane Russell. As the movie continues, we watch Anna spiral into madness, Ethan crumble under his father’s domineering nature, and Alistair bellow at everyone who so much as moves. The film makes it frankly hard to empathize with anyone – including Anna.

“The Woman in the Window” promises a lot but under-achieves. Despite its failure to deliver as an enticing thriller film, “The Woman in the Window” is successful in proving one long-debated truth: namely, that the book is always better than the movie. Where the movie rushes over its many side characters, the novel explores each role with more depth and nuance. What the two manifestations of the story have in common though, is an entirely predictable, sometimes boring, ending. In that way, I can understand Anna Fox to a degree. It would be hard not to obsess at least a little bit over whatever energy “Jane” is grooving with when there is nothing else going on in your life.

In the end, I feel exactly what Anna experienced during her bout with the Russell’s: a mixture of confusion, exhaustion and an intense desire to believe what I had just witnessed was not real.