Anna Kendrick’s Woman Of The Hour Is A Masterclass On Retelling True Crime

Woman of the Hour landed on Netflix this month, and it’s been striking a chord with female viewers.

The film is based on the real story of serial killer Rodney Alcala, who appeared on TV show The Dating Game in the midst of his murder spree in the late ’70s.

Anna Kendrick (who also directed the movie) stars as Cheryl Bradshaw, the woman who picks Rodney in the game and subsequently wins a trip away with him.

The film details Alcala’s murders up until his appearance on the show in 1978, and his final attack on a hitchhiker which leads to his eventual arrest. This narrative is peppered with moments of discomfort from The Dating Game, as Kendrick’s character unknowingly chooses a serial killer as her date.

What follows is a fictional series of events that resonates with most women; an uncomfortable drink with a stranger, a moment of uncertainty as she considers her safety, a dark parking lot, being followed by a man who may or may not be dangerous.

The scene was created for the purposes of the film, but that doesn’t make it any less realistic. In real life, Sheryl declined to go on the date with Alcala because she thought he was creepy – in Kendrick’s movie, she is followed in the dark and confronted at her car, only released when a group of men emerge from the studio across the road.

Woman of the Hour isn’t just another true crime retelling – it’s one that has the female experience at its core.

Kendrick details Alcala’s murders but doesn’t focus on sexual assaults, she lets the viewer know what happening without forcing them to sit through the violence. She presents a version of fear that most women have experienced, whether they’re on a date with a killer or not.

Prior to the film’s release, Kendrick said that she planned to donate any money she made to RAINN, the US’s National Centre for Victims of Crime.

She told SiriusXM: “Once I realised, ‘Oh there’s going to be money exchanging hands,’ I asked myself the question, ‘Do you feel gross about this?’ And I did. So I’m not making money off the movie.

“I think that it’s still a complicated area, but that felt like certainly… the least that I should do.”

More of this, please – and more of women making true crime films for women too.

Tags:

• Netflix