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The Woman in the Window director Joe Wright has claimed that the released cut of the maligned Netflix thriller was not the film he originally made.
In a new interview with Vulture, the BAFTA-nominated filmmaker, who has previously helmed titles such as The Darkest Hour and Pride & Prejudice, described his time making the movie as a "frustrating experience." He also said that his original conception was "a lot more brutal."
"It was a long, protracted, frustrating experience," Wright said. "The film that was finally released was not the film that I originally made. It was like, 'Oh, fucking hell. You live and you learn.' It got watered down. It got watered down a lot.
"It was a lot more brutal in my original conception. Both aesthetically, with really fucking hard cuts and really violent music – Trent Reznor did an incredible score for it that was abrasive and hardcore – and in its depiction of Anna, Amy Adams's character, who was far messier and kind of despicable in a lot of ways.
"I’m not going to delude myself," Wright continued. "It could just be that it was a film that didn’t work and that's okay, too. We have a right as artists to fail. We have to keep pushing ourselves. You've got to come in with a fairly decent batting average, but if you don't make the occasional film that doesn't work, then you're not fucking trying hard enough."
Released in November 2021, the movie centers on Amy Adams' Dr. Anna Fox, a New York-based agoraphobic who becomes convinced that she witnessed one of her new neighbors commit a grisly crime.
Total Film was a little easier on it, awarding it three out of five stars, and labeling it as "a modern, modestly Hitchockian tale laden with twists" in our review. But still, it wasn't a success, and that can't have been the reaction Wright had hoped for when he signed on to the star-studded project.
