Netflix has taken some pretty big swings and invested in a pretty wide variety of genres and subcultures. Still, the streaming service recently released content in a fairly new and ultimately consequential dimension: self-satire.Last week brought the release of “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” (2022), a television series farce commenting on trends in modern film. The show mocks the deeply oversaturated market for psychological thrillers surrounding white women in the suburbs who drink wine and solve crimes. The genre attempts to subvert convention: How could such twisted, heinous crimes happen in such pristine, wealthy suburbs? Though the show may be entirely too long and often disengaging, its existence in and of itself asks the broader question of origin: How did this happen? A market has to be so deeply full, so noticeably overplayed, that a big corporation like Netflix is able to mock its own role within it. In discussing more deeply the market play-by-play of this genre, one may more deeply understand the process of filmmaking and the economic feedback loops fueling it.
To start, it's important to note that the genre itself didn’t originate in movies at all: It came from books.Unreliable, white female narrators in murder mysteries are trademark of high-profit literature. These books are read in book clubs across America, ensnaring readers from those exact same suburbs in which they take place. In fact, the book genre is so popular that it even has a specialty name for itself: “airport novels.”Think of the books that could be found front-and-center at a Hudson Booksellers, covering up the overpriced candies and the uncomfortable neck pillows. It’s likely that the books in mind follow that similar plot structure. Likewise, the majority of films within this thriller subgenre are adapted from books. The three films of focus for this article are all similarly based on books: “Gone Girl” (2012) by Gillian Flynn,“The Girl on the Train” (2015) by Paula Hawkins and “The Woman in the Window” (2018) by A.J. Finn. Even the book genre itself is oversaturated, with special props given to those who are able to twist the plot tropes into newer, more interesting dimensions. Think back to books like “Little Fires Everywhere” (2017) by Celeste Ng, which centers around the subversion of that suburban thriller trope but with additional commentary on racism. Thus, the genre overflow doesn’t just affect the films themselves; they originate in their book counterparts.
This particular film market, however, began with a single film: “Gone Girl” (2014). Adapted from the bestsellingGillian Flynn novel, “Gone Girl” tells the story of Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), a suburban writer and wife who has gone missing.Amy’s husband Nick (Ben Affleck) becomes the prime suspect for her murder, and it is revealed that Amy’s picturesque innocence may have holes within it. The film plays directly on the thriller trope — it slowly reveals Amy, the perfect and amiable wife, to be a deeply sinister individual hiding behind the facade of her perfection. However, at the time of release, that was not a trope at all. In fact, “Gone Girl” shocked audiences in the way it subverted thriller norms at the time by focusing on a complex female lead, and for that it received widespread critical acclaim. The film racked up $369 million at the box office and served as the blueprint for a myriad of future film adaptations. In this way, “Gone Girl” truly was one of a kind.
Seeing the cash cow that “Gone Girl” was able to become, filmmakers soon began to put their full weight behind this suburban gendered thriller trope. This leads to the second film of focus, what one may call the peak of this genre’s market effectiveness: “The Girl on the Train” (2016). This film follows Rachel (Emily Blunt), a divorced alcoholic who begins to involve herself in a murder case in her ex-husband's suburban neighborhood. As Rachel pries deeper into the community, the lives and turmoils of the neighbors begin to unravel. The film did little to reinvent the genre, using similar shocks and twists to that of previous films like “Gone Girl. For this lack of basic innovation, the film received worse feedback, earning a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes (as opposed to “Gone Girl,” which earned itself an 87%). However, the movie was still able to capitalize upon this rolling wave within the movie industry, earning $173 million in the box office. In this way, “The Girl on the Train” signaled the peak of the genre — though it was still able to score big among audience’s dollars, the market was full and the plots became conventionalized.
Eventually the genre’s downfall had to come, and, quite ironically, this is where Netflix comes into the picture. In 2021, Netflix released “The Woman in the Window,” starring Amy Adams as Anna Fox, a child psychologist who herself suffers from agoraphobia. This condition leaves Anna trapped within her own house, where she believes she witnesses her neighbor Alistair Russell (Gary Oldman) murder his wife, Jane Russell (Jennifer Jason Leigh). The film uses those now-tired narratives of wealthy, white true-crime with unreliable female narrators, barely revising the plots of the previous films within the genre. Though its release on streaming doesn't afford a comparison of box office revenue, the film clearly failed in its goal, earning itself a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, the movie wasn’t even initially meant to be released on Netflix but was rather shoved off by original distributor 20th Century Fox. With “The Woman in the Window,” the genre had officially reached over-saturation and lost its consumer value. The market had bottomed out.
Now, just eight years after the initial release of “Gone Girl,” those who directly partook in this market fad are able to look back with parody and comedy. “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” memorializes the genre trend that has come and gone. To have such a significant thriller trope rise so quickly and fall so hard demonstrates one way in which the movie industry functions: Someone innovates, they reap the profits and then others try and try to imitate that original source until its content has run dry. Though this is a somewhat dismal view of filmmaking, there is still a large portion of it which contains originality and nuance. And though filmmaking is ultimately a market, the disappearance of overused trends like this emphasize the industry's changeability and capacity for growth. But still, one must ask the question: Which of your current favorite trends will be the next to face this stylistic reckoning?
