The title of Kristen Bell's Netflix series The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is a mouthful for a reason: It's inspired by a very specific genre of thriller that’s gained popularity in recent years. There are the basic tropes: missing woman, troubled witness with a past, mild-to-severe gaslighting, unanticipated conspiracy. But The Woman in the House takes those thriller clichés and heightens them, turning the show into an absurd pseudo-parody. From Rear Window to The Woman in the Window (there’re a lot of windows on this list), here are five books and movies from which the series draws inspiration. 

The Woman in the Window  Starting with the obvious, this book-turned-Netflix l feature follows a housebound woman named Anna (Amy Adams) who witnesses a murder in the house across the street... or does she? The Netflix adaptation stays close to the A. J. Finn novel — and The Woman in the House follows their lead, just with a tongue-in-cheek point of view. 

Rebecca The 1938 Daphne du Maurier novel might not deal with the same tropes as The Woman in the Window and The Woman in the House, but there is one obvious overlap: manipulation and gaslighting of women. (In Rebecca, newlywed Mrs. de Winter is manipulated into believing her husband regrets their marriage.) Both the book and the 2021 Netflix film adaptation demonstrate the importance of perspective and the devastating effect that unhealthy obsessions can have on people.

Rear Window The Hitchcock classic is the gold standard for thrillers — there's deception, murder and a hero who’s nosy as hell. Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) is laid up in his Manhattan apartment with a broken leg and takes to spying on his neighbors for entertainment, as one does. When he overhears a woman screaming, he suspects foul play and murder, and takes it upon himself to solve the crime. This is the same situation Kristen Bell’s character finds herself in.

Sharp Objects Any of the carefully plotted thriller-mystery novels from Gillian Flynn could've landed on this list, but Sharp Objects, which is about a woman who returns to her small hometown to investigate a series of murders, contains a plot twist that rivals the one in The Woman in the House. (They both feature one character who proves more dangerous than they seem.) The book is as engrossing a page-turner as Flynn's mega-bestseller Gone Girl, and the HBO adaptation of Sharp Objects stars Amy Adams in one of her most critically acclaimed performances.

The Girl on the Train  The Paula Hawkins novel treads similar ground as The Woman in the Window — people try to gaslight a woman into believing that she didn't actually witness a crime. The book has been turned into not one but two feature films: a 2016 rendition starring Emily Blunt and a 2021 Netflix Hindi-language version starring Parineeti Chopra.