Woman of the Hour

2024 | rated R | starring Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Tony Hale, Nicolette Robinson | directed by Anna Kendrick | 1h 35m | 3 1/2 out of 5 stars |

Aspiring actress Sheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick) goes on an episode of The Dating Game unaware that one of the men she’s choosing between leads a double life as a violent serial killer.

Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut Woman of the Hour is a movie I admire probably for its storytelling craftsmanship more than I was entertained by. It’s something that should be mentioned in film school classes as an example of how to deconstruct a true story, one that is not inherently cinematic, and rebuild it into an entertaining movie while still retaining the truth of the matter. Hour manages to be tense and generally satisfying without bending the truth of the story to make the characters more heroic or more villainous than they actually were. In the way that Darkest Hour is an example of how to tell a biopic through a singular event and not a person’s entire life story, Woman of the Hour manages to weave together several unrelated events together into something that works.

Rodney Alcala was a serial killer and rapist who charmed and assaulted women in California from 1977 through 1979. He’s also famous for the interesting footnote in his story, that this future convicted killer once appeared as a bachelor on The Dating Game – and won. Kendrick and writer Ian McDonald blow this quirky astrix of history out into feature length by wrapping the story of the bachelorette on that show, around the story of Alcala’s crimes. There is nothing inherently cinematic about a story of an actress that goes on The Dating Game. And there is nothing particularly movie runtime filling of the story of how serial killer Rodney Alcala was arrested, turned in by a brave woman that survived his attack.  However, the way this movie ties them both together around the theme of 70s sexism is a feat of screenwriting to behold.

The centerpiece of the film, smartly, revolves around Sheryl’s experience on The Dating Game. In almost real time, we see her couched by the host and grill the bachelors with out-of-period questions I have a hard time believing the real Sheryl Bradshaw said and Kendrick isn’t juicing with a 21st century snark. Meanwhile we are given trapdoors out of the show to follow Alcala’s history of crime and violence (which Kendrick films as an observer, allowing the most heinous stuff to happen off screen) and the story of Laura (Nicolette Robinson), a woman in the Dating Game audience who recognizes Alcala and ties these stories together.

Putting the technicals aside, Woman of the Hour is a deeply misandrist film. One that exploits the stereotype that the 70s was a time of rampant sexism and hostility to women to a cartoonish degree. It uses the lens of the 70s and the decade’s Anchorman image to satirize the time period from the perspective of 40 years in the future. It doesn’t feel like it lives in the 70s, it feels like it’s about the 70s as much as a Saturday Night Live skit might be. That arms-length approach is used by Kendrick to shield it from modern-day criticism (“hey, not all men are pigs, just those men”). It depicts a world where absolutely every man around Sheryl is a complete pig that exploits, ignores or abused women in one way or another, Alcala just being the more extreme version. And I mean everyone, from the casting agents that talk about her while she’s in the room to the host of The Dating Game (Tony Hale) to the security guards in the studio office and everyone’s insensitive boyfriends and husband. It didn’t bother me, but let’s be clear what this movie is doing.

True crime serial killer movies come along all the time, but the new angle that Kendrick finds for Woman of the Hour is a fresh one. As the story of the central character doesn’t go anywhere in real life, the movie still manages to find something thrilling in Sheryl’s brief brush with villainy. That it all comes together in a satisfying way is clever, smart and dare I say innovative.