Actress and debuting director Anna Kendrick should not be denied some courage. You just have to have the courage to make your first film as a director about a serial killer. Interesting detail: Woman of The Hour (2023) is based on true events. Although we mainly know Kendrick from comedies, her directorial debut has become a disturbing and stylish thriller.
De Dating Game Killler
Cheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick) is an aspiring actress trying to make it in 1970s Los Angeles. She goes from audition to audition, but with little success. When her agent points her towards a role in the popular film The Dating Game – kind of Here’s to Good Luck with Carry Tefsen – to increase her fame, she hesitantly agrees. Behind the screen are three potential men competing for the first date with Cheryl. However, the gentlemen do not know that she plays a role. Candidate number three, Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), impresses her the most. What she doesn’t know yet, the viewer has already seen in a number of disturbing flashbacks. Alcala is a predator who is after sex and then kills his victims.
It all starts in the early 1970s when Alcala, as an amateur photographer, winds one young woman after another around his finger and they become victims of his urges. Kendrick shows it all, but consciously chooses not to portray everything explicitly. A good choice because that is not necessary. It’s equally disturbing and scary enough. Zovatto plays the charming and unpredictable serial killer confidently and that gives the film enough oxygen to leave it with a bad feeling.
Face to face with a serial killer
What Kendrick especially wants to show us is what the image of men towards women was like in the 1970s – something that has changed considerably in 2024, partly thanks to the #MeToo affair and the woke culture. We see how signals are misinterpreted by men and how they talk about women. Even when a young lady in the audience thinks she recognizes Rodney as the then unknown serial killer, no one listens to her and does something about it. When Cheryl ultimately chooses Rodney, she finds out in a terrifying scene just how scary he really is. That meeting should never have happened since she was employed as an actress, but fate dictates otherwise. The fact that it ends well for Cheryl is not a spoiler, but it is all the more poignant that he was able to do his thing for so long before he was caught.
Woman of the Hour captured the spirit of the 1970s and although it is set in that era, there is still a lurking danger for women in 2024 to fall prey to violent, sex-hungry men with a bruised ego, who can strike at any time . Kendrick delivers an impressive debut and convinces as a director.
Rating: 4* / 5
