The Parallels Between The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window And The Thriller It Spoofs
If you’ve even heard the name of the new series with Kristen Bell, The Woman in the House Across the Street From The Girl In The Window, then you probably realize that it was meant to spoof thriller books that have come out during the last few decades. Although there are plenty of parallels between this Netflix series and books like The Girl On The Train or even Gone Girl, the one that it seems to draw the most inspiration from is The Woman in the Window.
Be careful, because there are spoilers ahead for the ending of season one of this new Netflix show and The Woman in the Window. So read at your own risk!
Parallels Between The Netflix Series And The Book:
The main character’s name is Anna.
This is the most obvious similarity between the series and the book. In both, the main character that we are following is named Anna. It’s a pretty common name, but it’s even spelled the same!
The main character becomes obsessed with the perfect-looking family across the street.
Anna becomes obsessed with these beautiful strangers because she misses her own family. Even though it looks like her child is alive early on, we soon realize that her daughter has died long ago – and she feels like the accident that led to the tragedy is her fault.
The main character has a drinking problem, takes pills that she shouldn’t be mixing with alcohol, and has gone through an intense amount of trauma, which makes her an unreliable narrator.
When Anna sees a murder across the street, she ends up calling the police for help. But since there is no body to be found and the family claims that everyone in the house is fine, the main character isn’t believed by the police. And soon, she starts to doubt whether she was seeing things herself.
The main character assumes the killer is the husband.
In both the book and the series, Anna believes that the husband (or boyfriend) is responsible for killing the woman in the house across the street. However, after overstepping boundaries and learning more about the family, she learns that isn’t the case and she misjudged him.
There’s a mysterious man that she keeps speaking to.
In the series, we think she’s simply talking to her therapist, but it turns out he’s her husband, the father of her daughter who has died. In the book, we think she’s talking to her husband, when really, her husband died in the same car accident that killed her child.
The main character is deathly afraid of stepping outside.
In the book, this is because she is agoraphobic and needs to remain in her house at all times. In the movie, this is because she is scared of the rain and is worried about getting caught in a storm.
The person you thought was responsible wasn’t actually the killer in the end.
Like most thrillers, the story ends with everyone thinking the murderer is one person – and then finding out that it was someone even more shocking. In the books, it looks like her tenant could be the killer before Anna realizes that it’s really the boy across the street and gets into an intense fight with him that ends with her in the hospital. And in the series, it looks like the man fixing the mailbox is the killer, until she realizes that it’s really the little girl across the street and she gets into an intense fight with her that ends with her in the hospital.