Is Ombrophobia Real? Anna’s Condition In The Woman In The House Explained

Caution: Spoilers Ahead for The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window

Netflix’s The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window stars Kristen Bell as a grieving woman who suffers from ombrophobia, but what exactly is this fear, and is it even real? In the series, ombrophobia is the disabling, irrational fear of rain. For Anna, this means whenever she is caught in the rain, she faints within mere seconds. The fear began after the tragic death of her young daughter, and is so extreme that she refuses to drive long distances because she’s afraid a potential downpour could make her pass out at the wheel. Because of this, she usually stays home, spying on her neighbors and drinking her favorite wine.

Anna’s daughter Elizabeth (Appy Pratt) was killed three years before the start of the TV show after being murdered by a serial killer who then began to eat her. She was accidentally locked in a room alone with the cannibal after joining her dad and Anna’s ex-husband Douglas (an FBI forensic psychologist played by 2 Fast 2 Furious’ Michael Ealy) for Take Your Child to Work Day. Anna blames herself because she had convinced Douglas to take Elizabeth with him against his initial wishes and developed a fear of rain because it had just begun to fall as she was telling them goodbye, causing her to associate it with the death of her child.

Ombrophobia is a very real condition that generally develops not from a fear of rain itself, but a fear of the negatively perceived effects that follow rainstorms, such as thunder and lightning. Because of this, it is sometimes interchanged with pluviophobia – the fear of anything related to rain. Kristen Bell’s character, however, is not afraid of lightning or thunder, but she associates rain with the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. The limited series, which is one of the best Netflix originals released in January 2022, portrays her fear by showing her passing out in the middle of the road on multiple occasions. As soon as she notices water droplets, she freezes dead in her tracks and isn’t even able to make it across the street to her neighbor’s house.

Anna manages to miraculously move past her immobilizing fear by the end of episode 8. While this is clearly a darkly comedic moment poking fun at Amy Adams’ seemingly rapid recovery at the conclusion of The Woman in the Window, it’s also meant to represent her moving forward. In a group therapy session earlier in the season, Anna reveals she’s worried that if she recovers, she’ll forget her daughter. As a result, even though her fear has halted her life, she’s not sure if she’s ready to leave it behind.

In the series finale, Anna tries to go after Buell, played by Cameron Britton of Mindhunter fame. She drops to the ground yet again in her attempt to cross the street. After passing out, she has a flashback of Elizabeth locked up with the cannibalistic killer, which seemingly gives her enough strength to drag herself across the road, down the stairs, and to her neighbor’s doorstep. She’s able to muster this inner strength because she suspects Buell is on his way to kill the little girl across the street. Afterward, she is able to dance in the rain.

While some viewers found this overly symbolic, it is a solid example of what the show set out to do. It’s a deadpan comedy created as a spoof to more serious thrillers such as The Girl on the Train. The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window manages to poke fun at the genre, lifting multiple plot points beat for beat from The Woman in the Window, including a phobia that limits the character’s ability to journey outside of her home. Simultaneously, it presents the lifted themes in such a way that they make sense in the context of Anna’s story.

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