Woman of the Hour opens with a structural trick that does most of its heavy lifting: intercutting the actual taping of a 1978 episode of The Dating Game with scenes of the killer's murders from years before and after, so the audience knows exactly what contestant Cheryl Bradshaw doesn't. Anna Kendrick, directing her first feature while also starring in it, keeps the game-show scenes claustrophobically bright and cheerful — the studio lighting, the host's patter, the audience's laughter — against a killer's private brutality happening just off camera and out of chronological order. It's a smart formal choice for a story fundamentally about how easily charm gets mistaken for safety, on television and off it.
Kendrick plays Cheryl with a wary intelligence that keeps the character from being a passive victim of dramatic irony; she reads Rodney's answers on the show as canned and performative even before she has any reason to suspect worse, which makes her half of the film a study in a woman's low-grade, constant vigilance. Daniel Zovatto has the harder assignment as Alcala, and wisely underplays the character's charisma rather than signaling menace, letting the horror live in the gap between his easy manner and what the film has already shown us he's capable of. Nicolette Robinson, as an audience member who recognizes Alcala and spends the episode trying to get someone to listen to her, gives the film its angriest, most pointed thread about institutional dismissal of women's instincts.
Woman of the Hour turns a cheerful 1970s game show into the most unsettling set piece of the year.
The film is at its sharpest when it stays inside the game show's absurd machinery — contestants coached to be quippy and grateful, a studio audience laughing at innuendo while a predator answers questions three feet away — and loses some momentum whenever it cuts away to earlier murders that add scope but not much new insight. Kendrick's direction is confident for a first feature, favoring tight compositions and control over showiness, and the film ultimately lands as a pointed, well-crafted piece of true-crime filmmaking more interested in institutional failure than shock value.
Woman of the Hour is based on the true story of Rodney Alcala, a serial killer convicted of murdering at least seven women who appeared as a contestant on The Dating Game in 1978 and was chosen as a match by contestant Cheryl Bradshaw. Anna Kendrick, previously attached only as star, took over directing duties for what became her feature debut, working from a script by Ian McDonald. The film was produced independently through AGC Studios, Vertigo Entertainment, and BoulderLight Pictures before Netflix acquired distribution rights following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023, eventually releasing the film in October 2024.
Woman of the Hour received strong reviews upon its Netflix release, earning praise for Kendrick's directorial control and the film's restrained, procedural approach to true-crime material rather than sensationalizing Alcala's crimes. It holds a notably high critics' score and became one of Netflix's more talked-about original films of its release window, helped by renewed public interest in the Alcala case. The film also drew attention as a rare directorial debut from a well-known actress judged by critics on formal terms rather than as a vanity project, strengthening Kendrick's standing as a filmmaker beyond her acting career.
