Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

True crime fans know about Rodney Alcala. He was a serial killer who appeared on the ‘70s TV show The Dating Game. The clips are online. He smiles too big, makes eye-rolling innuendos, and is selected by the woman for another date. He understood the show and how to win. Simultaneously, he was on a murder spree, evading conviction on his worst charges and sustaining a decades-long string of crimes.

He was convicted of 7 murders, although, as Woman of the Hour notes, he may have killed over 100 women and girls. He was a prolific and brutal criminal, but that isn’t why he’s remembered. He’s remembered because of his charming appearance on The Dating Game, the footage a chilling reminder that safety is never guaranteed, even when you’re being broadcast to millions of people.

However, Woman of the Hour is not about Rodney Alcala. We learn very little about the man, seeing him only through his crimes and his infamous television appearance. Always there are red flags and unease. He is a wolf, and he never puts on sheep’s clothing. That’s because the film is interested in the culture around the man, the fodder women are positioned as in a patriarchal society, to the point that one is thrown in front of this obviously dangerous man, and a whole audience applauds. “What are girls for?” Anna Kendrick’s Sheryl asks of her potential suitors in The Dating Game. She may as well be looking at the camera when she asks. It’s the point of the film, the blunt, chilling question being asked of all of us.

Kendrick directs as well as stars, marking her first time helming a film. It’s a hell of a debut, steady in its uneasy stare. The script she’s working with is less even, jumping in time from Alcala’s appearance on the dating game to several of his murders. Nothing is sequential, setting up Kendrick to delve more into ideas than events. That’s not to say the film is squeamish about Alcala’s brutality. His crimes are shown unflinchingly, the violence there to drive home the mood Kendrick steeps you in.

That mood? It’s chilly and mundane. There’s not a singular word for it. What’s captured is everyday threat, the feel of being constantly preyed upon while goinf about your life. The threat is too pervasive to hide away. You must throw yourself in front of the predator and hope it won’t turn out too badly.

That makes Woman of the Hour a surprisingly subdued film. It doesn’t hit high, tense notes. It settles in and lets you percolate in a well-realized 1970s America that is updated just enough to make clear the set dressings have changed but not the dynamics. Kendrick’s Sheryl never would’ve gone on the screed she subjects her suitors to in the film, not in the ‘70s or today. Her questions are too tough, too direct, and too targeted at men. They would never fly in American society. They barely fly in the context of the film, which pulls women out of the background and puts them front and center.

It’s a striking approach to true crime, which often centers the men who commit heinous crimes. As a Netflix release, Woman of the Hour comes on the heels of one of the streamer’s most-viewed shows, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. That show puts the boys who brutally murdered their parents in the middle of a soapy story that peddles in intrigue. The California sun shines bright on the boys. No such brightness exists in Woman of the Hour, despite the events occurring in the same city.

Woman of the Hour isn’t having fun with the story. The fame of Alcala will get people to sit down and watch. But instead of going for easily digested intrigue, Kendrick takes the audience down a darker, much less satisfying road. And this story shouldn’t be satisfying. Alcala won his episode of The Dating Game. Kendrick is careful to frame this not as a mistake made by a naive woman but an understandable outcome of an intelligent woman’s circumstances. There’s nothing fun about that reality.

This makes Woman of the Hour a difficult film to watch, and it takes little effort to imagine how difficult it was to pull off. Kendrick’s firm direction is impressive. Her film never wavers from its goals, even when straying would make it an easier on the audience. She’s correct in presenting this as a story that shouldn’t be easy. One should shudder thinking of Alcala celebrating his triumph in The Dating Game. And shudder you will.

Release: Available now on Netflix
Director: Anna Kendrick
Writers: Ian McDonald
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson, Tony Hale