“Woman of the Hour”: A Crime Thriller that Never Takes Off
Anna Kendrick has made her directorial debut with this Netflix film, based on the case of serial killer Rodney Alcala and his victims.
Summary
Woman of the Hour is based on the true story of Cheryl Bradshaw, a bachelorette who was a contestant on the 1970s TV show The Dating Game. Her choice was charismatic bachelor number three, Rodney Alcala.
But this apparently charming man has one deadly defect: he is a serial killer.
The True Crime Boom
In the past few years, true crime productions have become the new trend. Every project that covers a real criminal case, be it in documentary form or in fiction, has a high probability of being successful.
Netflix has been the company that has capitalized on this trend the most, with the release of shows and films such as Making a Murderer, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, or the anthology series Monsters, just to name a few. The reasons why this particular genre has gained so many adepts all of a sudden is something I don’t understand, but I suppose this is how we get to the production that we’re commenting today.
Woman of the Hour is inspired by the real-life crimes of Rodney Alcala, a serial killer convicted of various charges of murder, rape, kidnapping, and battery. Before his death in 2021, he had been conclusively linked to eight murders, but the total number of victims remains unknown. Alcala is often referred to as the dating show killer, as he appeared on The Dating Game during the 1970s, in the midst of his killing spree.
And it is precisely at this point that our movie starts.
A Messy Structure
Woman of the Hour goes back and forth, showing us Alcala meeting and attacking some of his victims, but the center of the film is the dating TV show in which he was a contestant in 1978. This dynamic works well enough for the first half of the film. But far from feeding the mystery, the constant time jumps make the timeline confusing. You are never sure whether the crimes are happening before or after Alcala’s participation in the TV show.
However, as we move forward, the reason for Sheryl (Anna Kendrick’s character) to be the protagonist becomes unclear. I know that the fact that Alcala was part of a TV show is very shocking and, therefore, very effective to get the audience’s interest. But putting that aside, nothing really happens to Sheryl, besides living a frightening moment. We learn that she is a struggling actress and that she ends up in The Dating Game in an effort to pursue that dream career. Which is not all that relevant. The movie was sold as “based on Alcala’s life”, but he is merely a supporting character.
It would have been interesting to focus on Alcala’s victims. In fact, my favorite part was when teenage Amy managed to trick him and escape. Telling more of Amy’s story would have been more relevant. Laura’s storyline, in which she recognizes Rodney as the man who killed her friend, does not receive a lot of attention either and is left inconclusive. If it was not going anywhere, why bother to include it?
The film postscript completes the disappointment. They ran out of time, so it was a quick way to explain what happened in the end.
Critical Reception
After a very limited theater run, Woman of the Hour was released on Netflix last week to excellent reviews on our beloved and always honest Rotten Tomatoes.
The critics have praised Daniel Zovatto’s performance as Alcala (something he deserves) and Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, highlighting her treatment of those true stories. And while I don’t think she did a bad job, the final product is not nearly as wonderful as they are saying. The film never achieves a creepy and uncomfortable atmosphere or gives you a sense of immediate danger, except on a few select occasions.
In short, it’s not bad—good enough for a Sunday afternoon—but pretty average nonetheless. A normal movie made for TV.
