Review: Anna Kendrick Is True Crime’s ‘Woman of the Hour’
The true crime industrial complex comes for us all, and now is the turn of Anna Kendrick: an accomplished actor who, with Woman of the Hour, turns accomplished director. The film is about the crimes of Rodney Alcala, an American serial killer who murdered five people in the late seventies and has been accused of taking many more lives. You could, if you wanted to, find out a lot more about Alcala; his grizzly murders, the explicit photography he created of his victims, his many psychiatric diagnoses. But Woman of the Hour thankfully isn’t too interested in all that.
The screenplay, from Ian McDonald, smartly focuses on a few episodes from Alcala’s spree rather than attempting to tell the killer’s whole story. He finds girls in need of help or cheering up or simply distraction and fulfils those basic needs before turning violent. Daniel Zovatto, who plays Alcala, has a creepy assuredness to his performance and manages to convey that Alcala was a horrible person but also intelligent, able to put people at ease (and switch things up), and knew how to give a good soundbite.
Which brings us to The Dating Game. In 1978, Alcala appeared on the game show, an American version of Blind Date: a girl questions three boys, who remain behind a screen, before picking a date. Enter Kendrick, who plays the real-life Sheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring and down on her luck actor in Los Angeles. Bradshaw is about to give up on her dreams when her agent offers a television appearance. No need to audition. It’s for the role of a contestant on the dating show. It’s not exactly Spielberg, but it’ll be great exposure. It could be, to use an industry term, her big break. I think I’ve seen this film before. You probably have, too.
The behind-the-scenes of the dating show has a grim appeal, not on the level of the murders obviously but still gruesome: a lecherous television host who can switch on his charm with the flash of a light bulb and humiliating wardrobe requirements (a dress is picked for her which is more “flattering”). Among that luridness, glimpses of goodness: the hair and make-up assistants who offer advice (which equates to: the boys are dolts), an audience member who recognises Alcala from her past and tries to warn the staff. Kendrick, who clearly knows a thing or two about industry machinations, draws out that tension in her direction. These things can be disorienting and unpleasant and somehow still enticing. On camera, she has a brittleness and intelligence that works well for Bradshaw.
On The Dating Game, Bradshaw is supposed to play a sweet and unthreatening, which she pulls off. But after a commercial break, she goes off-script, asking the boys more probing questions, which stumps the first two boys (alternately dumb and gross) but gives Alacala the opportunity to show he is built different. It is Bradshaw’s final question – “what is a girl for?” – which really gives Alcala the chance to shine with a loosely feminist response. In truth, Alcala’s answers are not exactly thought-provoking but they’re just smart enough to set him apart. Under the glare of a television camera, he’s basically Aristotle.
It is not a surprise that Woman of the Hour has found a home on Netflix, which has become the destination for all things grizzly. In the past month, the latest instalment of Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology series Monsters arrived, this time chronicling Lyle and Erik Menendez, brothers who killed their parents in the Eighties. A documentary about those brothers swiftly followed, ready to answer any questions that Murphy’s garish (and truthfully, pretty entertaining) drama failed to answer. You could justifiably criticise the genre on the grounds of exploitation or glamorisation or plain bad taste. And if you question that impulse for a minute, seriously even just a second, it unravels into a fairly ugly answer.
But the most intriguing part of the film isn’t a serial killer or his crimes but the lengths we go to to make ourselves likeable. How Bradshaw jumps at the opportunity to appear on the show, the way she plays up to the audience’s laughter. Her hesitance to push back against the host and later, Alcala. After an uneasy date at a tiki bar, the gameshow winners walk through a car park. Bradshaw gives Alcala a fake number, and then moments later, he asks her to read it out loud. She cannot. The treachery becomes overt, the horror comes to the surface: you realise that all that pretence is pointless but also unavoidable.
On that knife edge, Kendrick finds killer intrigue: we know what is likely to happen, the victims have an inkling, so how long do you stay nice for? How long can you afford to?
‘Woman of the Hour’ is available on Netflix
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