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A clunky psychological slasher that picked the wrong title at the worst time stalks its streaming prey

Through no fault of its own, the timing was terrible.

girl at the window
via Paradiz

In the movie business, timing can often be everything, and one of the biggest drawbacks that could have deterred viewers from taking the plunge on last year’s psychological slasher Girl at the Window may have been its title, which was an issue created through no fault of its own.

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It may have been entirely subliminal, but the fact filmmaker Mark Hartley’s atmospheric chiller released not too long after Netflix’s universally-panned and five-time Razzie nominee The Woman in the Window – as well as the streaming service’s uninspiring parody The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window – could have tainted it by association.

girl at the window
via Paradiz

Then again, a 33 percent Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t the sort of numbers you’d associate with a hidden gem or an unfairly overlooked exercise in tension-laced cinema, but Girl at the Window has at least made a splash on streaming to compensate from flying almost completely under the radar first time out.

Per FlixPatrol, the heavy-handed nightmare scenario has been lurking in the shadows of the most-watched charts of iTunes and Chili, where it’s even ranked as high as fourth place in the United Kingdom on the latter. Radha Mitchell and Ella Newton star as a mother and daughter struggling to come to terms with the accidental death of the family unit’s missing patriarchal piece.

Mitchell’s widow doesn’t take long to find a new love interest next door, but her child suspects that he might just be the infamous serial killer that’s been terrorizing their hometown for years, and things largely play out as predictably as you’d imagine.