Woman Of The Hour: There are no winners here

The crime
The assaults and murders of at least seven, and possibly as many as 130, women and girls by Rodney Alcala.

(Netflix)

The story
Alcala is often called “the Dating Game Killer,” because he appeared on the show in 1978, and prior to its release yesterday on Netflix, Anna Kendrick’s Woman Of The Hour was often shorthanded the same way – and I get why cases and projects get these glibly “hook-y” labels, and Lord knows I’m not above using them myself, because there are so many murderous monsters to keep straight in this genre. 

But the decision to call the film Woman Of The Hour is just one of the choices Kendrick makes to shift our gaze from Alcala onto his victims, and then zoom out to the misogynistic culture that lets a toxic mold like him take root and spread. Woman Of The Hour follows an aspiring actor named Sheryl (also Kendrick) whose agent puts her on The Dating Game to “get her seen,” and how events unfold when Sheryl’s Bachelor #3 is Alcala (Daniel Zovatto). 

Chillingly, is how, because by the time Alcala is stalking Sheryl through a studio parking lot, Sheryl fully aware that she’s prey he’s toying with, the viewer has already seen Alcala flip his sociopath switch from mellow good listener to dead-eyed attacker several times. Kendrick shoots that sequence really well, and overall is thoughtful about shot compositions that crowd Sheryl, frame men as looming, or focus up Alcala so that everything in the frame that isn’t his vibrating menace seems to disappear.

That Terry (Pete Holmes) just expects Sheryl (Kendrick) to be the one to make room in the hallway speaks volumes…as does her eye-roll. (Netflix)

The attacks don’t dwell, and try to respect the victims by dropping out sound or moving to wide shots, but convey the aerobic terror of the moment, its concussive calamity.

Zovatto is just right as Alcala, not overplaying the hatefulness, but Kendrick’s own performance and those of the actors playing Alcala’s other victims – Kelley Jakle, Kathryn Gallagher, and Autumn Best – combine with Ian McDonald’s script for an infuriatingly effective illustrations of the risk assessments women have to run every day, in every situation, all the goddamned time. The constant temperature-taking of a conversation, of his ego, of whether a situation is still merely awkward or has crossed the line into “imminent felony”; knowing where the exits are and whether you can count on the other women in the building; smiling and trying to please you so we don’t get killed, except that smiling and trying to please you might also get us killed. 

Sarah (Kelley Jakle) realizes it’s going wrong with Alcala (Daniel Zovatto). (Netflix)

When Sheryl’s needy neighbor Terry (Pete Holmes, perfectly too much right down to the puka shells) starts sulking at the bar, you can almost hear Sheryl doing the math on whether it’s easier and faster to fuck him this once, then change her schedule to avoid him…forever, probably, because as Tony Hale’s acidly dismissive TDG host shrugs, “You know boys, they’re babies,” but of course there’s no thought that they ought to grow up. That’s just life – unless you don’t give baby the breast. Then it’s death.

A couple of reviewers didn’t care for Woman Of The Hour; Rebecca Liu found it “incoherent” and wondered if it had anything to say, but I don’t think I understand that assessment, because the film isn’t trying to solve a mystery or create a profile. It’s editing a sprawling, horrible file down to a handful of exhibits to say one thing: that women can’t win. That the woman of the hour is sometimes a contestant on a cheesy game show, and sometimes the one whose disappearance or demise is leading the eleven o’clock news. Kendrick’s directorial debut is assured, moving, and very unhappy about what it’s telling us, and I recommend it highly.

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