By JAKE COYLE
In Anna Kendrick’s “Woman of the Hour,” a chilling, based-on-a-true-story drama about when a 1970s serial killer appeared on an episode of “The Dating Game,” one of the most telling images isn’t a grisly murder scene (though there are those). It’s Pete Holmes’ face.
Kendrick, making her directorial debut, stars as an aspiring actor named Cheryl Bradshaw who ultimately winds up a contestant on that particular “Dating Game” episode. Early in the film, she’s venting about her audition frustrations with a neighbor (Holmes) over drinks. After he makes an awkward pass, she recoils and he sits heavily, staring forward in disappointment.
The tension of those encounters, and how women are forced to handle, and suffer, the bruised egos of men, fuels “Woman of the Hour,” a sometimes awkwardly plotted but consistently insightful thriller about the anxiety of the female experience and the grim game of constantly weighing the threat of potential danger in men. The film begins streaming Friday on Netflix.
Kendrick, working from a script by Ian McDonald, opens “Woman of the Hour” with a scene in the remote foothills of Wyoming. There, Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) is playfully photographing a young woman (Kelley Jakle) but soon has his hands around her throat.
Though the film then shifts primarily to Cheryl taping “The Dating Game,” “Woman of the Hour” is interspersed with similarly gruesome encounters between Alcala and women. They follow a similar pattern. He’s charming and even sensitive, but turns violent at the first sign of rejection.
“Woman of the Hour” isn’t your standard true crime dramatization. The perspective of Alcala, who was convicted in 1980 of killing seven women and girls — including 12-year-old Robin Christine Samsoe in Orange County — and died on death row in 2021, isn’t the one that matters here. It’s the women he targeted.
Kendrick’s movie might have been a better, more suspenseful film if it…
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