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America has a seemingly never-ending fascination with serial killers, with multiple movies, TV shows, books, and podcasts dedicated to their murderous exploits. The glut of content has become so much that it's difficult to stand out from the pack, something that the new Netflix film Woman of the Hour attempts to do.
It helps that the movie — which is about famed real-life "Dating Game Killer" Rodney Alcala, whose crimes have already been the subject of several documentaries, podcasts, and TV shows — features Anna Kendrick, who both stars in the film and makes her directorial debut. Kendrick plays Sheryl, a struggling actress in the late 1970s who, in lieu of other work, takes a gig as a contestant on The Dating Game. One of the three bachelors is Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), who - unbeknownst to anyone at the show - had already committed a number of murders.
Utilizing scenes featuring The Dating Game as a grounding point, Kendrick and writer Ian McDonald take the audience back-and-forth in time throughout the film, showing how Alcala lured in several of his victims. Typically using his camera and flattery to convince women to let him do a photoshoot in a remote location, Alcala preyed on people throughout California in the '70s.
Because the film has scenes at multiple points in time, it allows Kendrick to play around with the chronology of events. The first victim shown is in 1977, but others come in 1971, 1978, and 1979, and the mixing up of their scenes is both an indication of how long Alcala operated, as well as the haphazard nature of his crimes.
It also goes a long way toward establishing the type of person that Alcala was. While it's easy to demonize a serial killer, and this film certainly does, Kendrick and McDonald find the nuances in the character. His ability to go between being utterly charming and supremely creepy are on display throughout, and demonstrate why he was able to convince so many different people to go along with what he wanted.
The Dating Game portion of the film is a distillation of all of Alcala's other encounters into one distinct period. Even though the show doesn't allow Cheryl to see any of the contestants, she too becomes charmed by Alcala, only to get creeped out by his advances after the taping. Cheryl's interactions with Alcala take on an enhanced tenor given everything else the film shows, and keep the viewer on edge.
The structure of the film is such that, even though Kendrick is the headliner, she's not really the star. Instead, she serves as the entry point into the story, and keeps the story flowing when it returns to her character's storyline. Zovatto is the true lead, and he plays all parts of Alcala extremely well. He makes him into a person to be feared without ever becoming an over-the-top villain.
Other versions of the serial killer story may delve deeper into the psychology of the person committing the murders, but Woman of the Hour is still a solid story told with verve by Kendrick. Even though there is little mystery to it, the film contains plenty of drama and suspense, making it a memorable entry into the ever-growing serial killer genre.
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Woman of the Hour is now streaming on Netflix.
