A copycat of Copycat

We already knew that The Woman in the Window, one of the worst movies of the year, was a copycat of Rear Window.

It turns out, it's also a copycat of Copycat.

I watched Jon Amiel's 1995 serial killer procedural thriller -- wasn't this the description of every movie released in the 1990s? -- on Saturday night, knowing that this might actually be the case. I didn't specifically put the film on my list of things to watch because of The Next Picture Show podcast, having already noticed it among the offerings on Amazon, but they did mention Copycat in connection with their discussion of The Woman in the Window. Tasha Robinson didn't say what the similarities between the two movies were, only that they were funny and unmistakable. Having heard that discussion, I bumped Copycat slightly higher on my priorities list, and it rose to the top on Saturday.

Yeah, The Woman in the Window looks even more lame by comparison.

Spoilers for The Woman in the Window and Copycat.

Both films have a central female character (the main character in Window, the co-lead in Copycat) who is severely agoraphobic and can't leave her extremely spacious apartment. 

Both characters became agoraphobic as the result of trauma, a car accident in the case of Window's Anna Fox (Amy Adams), a murder attempt in a bathroom in the case of Copycat's Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver). 

Both characters involve the police when they're concerned about a threat, who in both cases do not believe them because the characters admit to possibly having been confused as the result of a cocktail of prescription medication and alcohol. So both characters are sort of unreliable narrators.

Both characters must ultimately face their agoraphobia when they are forced to the rooftops of their respective apartment buildings, the perfect place for a climax, don't ya know.

In both instances there's even an effect of the camera zooming in on and swirling around them, to dramatize just how confronting they find this situation.

Both characters are being stalked by a baby-faced killer with whom they have to grapple on this rooftop.

The big difference? Well there are two, and one kind of leads to the other.

In Copycat, there is no scene afterward that shows that this episode of confronting her trauma has magically cured Helen Hudson of her agoraphobia. In fact, after she survives the rooftop confrontation, we don't see her again on screen. We do get a chilling closing shot of the man who tried to kill her the first time (Harry Connick Jr.) as he corresponds from prison with the next candidate he wants to send after Helen. On a metaphorical level, this shows us that trauma is not soon expelled and quite likely will come up again in the future.

In The Woman in the Window, Anna Fox leaves her apartment building behind and joyfully walks the streets of Manhattan that once so frightened her, a new woman. It's as though a second highly traumatic episode cured the first.

The second difference is that Copycat is really quite watchable and involving, and The Woman in the Window is a piece of steaming hot garbage.