The popularity of true crime has incited a lot of scolding about our collective voyeurism. More productively, it has also inspired stories told from new perspectives — those of the victims or survivors of famous crimes rather than their perpetrators.
Actor Anna Kendrick makes her directorial debut with just such a movie. Woman of the Hour, now streaming on Netflix, foregrounds the actual and potential victims of Rodney Alcala, the so-called “Dating Game Killer,” who was convicted of seven murders and died in prison in 2021. He was known for using his photographic hobby to lure victims, and investigators believe he may have killed many more than we know about.
The deal
In 1977 Wyoming, Rodney (Daniel Zovatto) photographs a young woman (Kelley Jakle). He coaxes her into a heartfelt confession and then strangles her. In 1979 California, Rodney picks up a teenage runaway (Autumn Best). In 1971 New York, he attacks a woman after helping her move furniture.
These stories frame the central narrative, which takes place in Los Angeles in 1978. Struggling actor Sheryl (Kendrick) is tired of male casting directors who think her vibe is too “angry.” But she wants exposure, so she reluctantly agrees to her agent’s suggestion that she appear as a bachelorette on the cheesy but popular show “The Dating Game.”
Sheryl’s dating options leave something to be desired, even by reality-show standards. Bachelor No. 1 doesn’t know the difference between an astronomer and an astrologer. Bachelor No. 2 is a chauvinist boor. Bachelor No. 3 is Rodney.
Will you like it?
A serial killer getting a slot on “The Dating Game” is one of those stranger-than-fiction occurrences that inspire Hollywood to reflect on its own culpability in the true crime ecosystem. Screenwriter Ian McDonald has situated Woman of the Hour in a twilight zone between fact and fiction; while most of the characters are based on real people, their names have been altered.
Hollywood illusions wield dangerous power in this story. “The Dating Game” host (Tony Hale) instructs Sheryl to hide her intelligence (“Boys are babies,” he explains) and smile, smile, smile as she trades double entendres with the bachelors. Rodney evokes the power of the silver screen to entice his victims, name-dropping Roman Polanski (like him, a convicted sexual predator) and suggesting that his photos could be their first step to stardom.
The real Alcala evaded the consequences of his early convictions by using the alias John Berger — coincidentally or not, also the name of the art critic who authored Ways of Seeing and helped shape the theory of the “male gaze.” In a tense scene toward the end of the movie, Rodney challenges Sheryl, accusing her of wanting to be “watched” without letting herself be “seen.”
But we can see that Sheryl’s evasions are a survival strategy. And she needs one, because Rodney, unlike the other bachelors, performs empathy and caring with disturbing skill.
Woman of the Hour is at its best in depicting Rodney’s twisted courtship of Sheryl, on- and off-screen. One of the makeup artists who primps Sheryl for the show says it best: The real question every woman silently asks her date is “Will you hurt me?” Zovatto projects warmth and charisma, then turns on a dime toward menace. Always tightly wired in her roles, Kendrick makes Sheryl a match for this master of illusion. The very personality traits she’s told to hide on “The Dating Game” could save her in real life.
As a director, Kendrick handles the nonlinear structure deftly, using match cuts to link the different time frames and counterpointing the stifling fakeness of the game-show set with the spacious beauty of desert landscapes.
But some of the film’s fictional elements have a stale, TV-movie feel. An invented member of “The Dating Game” audience named Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who recognizes Rodney as the likely killer of her friend, is used to jack up tension. Laura stands in for the many witnesses whose tips to law enforcement went unheeded, resulting in more victims — a true and shocking aspect of the case. Her character remains a contrivance, however, and the coincidence of her being in the audience demands major suspension of disbelief.
Sheryl’s eventual subversion of the unspoken rules of “The Dating Game” is another fictional embroidery, but this one is fun and cathartic enough to justify itself. In a world where women are expected to smile and go with the flow, Sheryl dares to interrogate the bachelors with scalpel precision.
Kendrick has built a career on playing the sort of woman who gets told she’s “too much” — too savvy, too high-strung, too hard to satisfy. But in Sheryl’s story, “too much” turns out to be just right.
If you like this, try…
“Unbelievable” (eight episodes, 2019; Netflix): The difficulty of convincing law enforcement to take women’s stories seriously is also the theme of this harrowing, fact-based miniseries about a young woman who is prosecuted for reporting an “unbelievable” sexual assault.
My Friend Dahmer (2017; AMC+, Crackle, Peacock, PLEX, Pluto TV, Prime Video, Sling TV, Tubi, rentable): Like Woman of the Hour, this fest favorite focuses on someone who came dangerously close to a serial killer — in this case, Jeffrey Dahmer’s high school friend, who later based a graphic novel on his experiences.
May December (2023; Netflix): With this superlatively acted dark comedy about the aftermath of a notorious teacher-student “romance,” director Todd Haynes centers the victims while also satirizing the entertainment industry that exploits them.
This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2024.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
