On the Wikipedia page for the serial killer Rodney Alcala, there is a 145-word entry under the subheading “Dating Game appearance,” which recounts an unsettling if ultimately uneventful incident from 1978 when Alcala was not only unwittingly cast to appear on the kitschy, Chuck Barris-created daytime game show The Dating Game, but was actually selected as the winning bachelor by that week’s contestant, Cheryl Bradshaw. The stuff of breathless true crime podcasts, rich with irony — Alcala, who was convicted of killing seven women and has been connected to the murder or assault of dozens more, would lure his victims to an isolated spot under the false pretense of photographing them against a scenic backdrop — the near-miss thankfully amounted to little. Bradshaw declined to accept the show’s destination-date prize after, deeming Alcala to be “creepy” and never had further contact with him. It’s the sort of anecdote that sends a momentary chill down your spine, but one that on the face of it doesn’t seem to be substantive enough to support a feature film without it taking extensive dramatic liberties. Woman of the Hour, from actor-turned-director Anna Kendrick, both confirms as well as disproves that assertion, although it requires radically upending the film’s “too remarkable to be believed” premise. As the film unfolds, it becomes evident that Kendrick is minimally concerned with the events of a specific TV game show and rather how that experience fell within a continuum of behavior that allowed Alcala (and predatory men in general) to operate with impunity for years. However, Woman of the Hour’s sensibilities are infused with an unconstructive level of modernism; viewing actions and behavior that would have almost certainly passed without detection or scrutiny through the self-satisfied prism of several decades worth of hindsight.
Perhaps the most unexpected choice made by the film is treating Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) not as a boogeyman lurking in the shadows, but instead as its de facto protagonist. Employing a decentralized narrative that jumps back and forth across several different years in the 1970s, we repeatedly observe Rodney targeting different women, frequently from behind his still camera. An amateur shutterbug with long black hair, a doughy build, and gentle eyes, Alcala doesn’t present as especially threatening, which the film recognizes is precisely what made him so dangerous. Alcala (at least this version of him) is a quintessential “nice guy”; the sturdy shoulder to cry on and someone who would never be so coarse as to objectify women or make crass jokes. A “nice,” non-threatening guy who you can really let your guard down with until the next thing you know he’s on top of you with his hands around your throat — in a detail so sickeningly specific it must have been pulled from the case file, we witness Alcala strangulate a woman to the point of unresponsiveness, only to resuscitate her through CPR so that she’s awake when he rapes her. We’re watching Alcala refine his craft over the course of a decade, yet the film still holds the character at a remove, presenting him exclusively through his predatory efforts while treating his psyche as something confused and unknowable.
After establishing Alcala’s M.O., we’re introduced to Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick, appearing in front of the camera as well), an infrequently employed actress in Los Angeles in the midst of an especially humiliating audition. In an early example of how bluntly Woman of the Hour plays its gender politics, Cheryl is forced to smile her way through a litany of demeaning comments from two casting executives (asking whether she’ll do on-camera nudity, critiquing her in a stage whisper in her immediate presence, instantly forgetting her name, etc.). It’s enough to make her consider giving up her Hollywood dreams and moving back east — not helping matters, seemingly her only “friend” is the wormy guy in her apartment complex who can’t take the hint that she’s not into him, played by comedian Pete Holmes — when her agent phones her to surprise her with an actual paying gig on national television. She’s been cast as the “bachelorette” in an episode of The Dating Game — the show was so dependent on screen presence and coming up with flirty banter on the fly that the producers frequently stocked it with ringers who were in AFTRA — which we’re told mostly involves reading pre-written prompts off a notecard and responding to her suitors’ innuendo-laden replies with girlish laughter. But unknown to Cheryl from her perch in the hot seat (unknown to almost everyone, really) is that one of the three male contestants behind the partition is Alcala. And his experience disarming women through his relaxed charm and earning their trust has made him a terrifyingly effective player of this particular game.
Kendrick, working from a screenplay by Ian McDonald, perhaps recognizing there are limited opportunities for actual suspense, treats Cheryl’s flirtation in front of a live studio audience as a low-stakes demonstration of how Alcala would toy with his prey. While the other two more conventionally attractive male contestants stumble over their words or emanate sweaty desperation in their eagerness to get laid, Rodney is in his element; confident that his looks can’t be held against him in this setting while being well-practiced in flattering women by cynically appropriating second-wave feminism. It all plays into the film’s overarching theme of being wary of self-professed allies (there are conscious echoes in the way both Zovatto and Holmes portray their respective characters). But the film’s touch is sledgehammer heavy, and its episodic structure doesn’t allow for much in the way of escalation or development, merely variations on an oft-implied theme. At times, Woman of the Hour is less a thriller than a thinly disguised treatise on gender relations, with the film never missing an opportunity to emphasize the routine dehumanization women face simply making their way through the world. Whether it’s the glad-handing and paternalistic host of The Dating Game (Tony Hale, in a hair helmet that the film encourages us to snicker at) only half-listening to Cheryl, telling wardrobe to put her in a more form-accentuating dress, and encouraging her not to come off too intelligent on the show lest it intimidate the men, or something as simple as a posted sign backstage encouraging female contestants to check their lipstick before walking in front of the cameras, Kendrick treats the entire game show as a garish funhouse mirror of the way women are objectified by society. But the film is far too content to score cheap points — during a commercial break Cheryl rewrites all the misogynist questions she’s been instructed to ask in order to humiliate the male contestants, which, like many of the script’s deviations from reality, smacks of pandering bullshit — particularly in making the argument that for all the progress that’s been made in the last 40-50 years, not a whole lot has actually changed.
Like the recently-released Blink Twice, Woman of the Hour is the spiritual progeny of A Promising Young Woman, which itself was a ham-fisted attempt to channel the rage of #MeToo into a brightly-colored tract about the everyday perils faced by women. Nowhere is this more evident than in an invented subplot featuring Nicolette Robinson as a member of the in-studio audience who recognizes Rodney as the man she believes killed her friend a year earlier. Going through the stages of PTSD while also being dismissed by assorted “well-intentioned” men (including her boyfriend, who argues that the show’s producers surely would have done some sort of a background check on the contestants), the character’s efforts to alert somebody in a position of authority is played as a cruel race against the clock that’s doomed to fail. Lives could have been saved if only men would have just listened to her (#BelieveWomen)! It’s one of numerous instances of the film spoon-feeding the viewer, rationalizing (incorrectly) that didacticism is both required to stoke sufficient outrage and necessary of subject matter this urgent. It reflects, along with a strained post-taping drink between Cheryl and Rodney that concludes with a near-confrontation (again, by all accounts, never happened), the film’s attempts to inject present-day foresight in order to look back in astonishment at a more “innocent” past for failing to pick up on the what should have been obvious signals. The filmmakers may believe they’re giving voice to frustration at errors of omission, but it plays almost as unearned superiority. How could these people not have realized what was so obvious? It’s like, haven’t they seen Dateline?
DIRECTOR: Anna Kendrick; CAST: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Tony Hale, Nicolette Robinson; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; IN THEATERS: October 11; STREAMING: October 18; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 29 min.
