Few things are more relatable than opening Netflix knowing full well that you have time to watch a movie, and realizing with a pang of panic that you don’t actually know what you want to watch. If you’ve ever found yourself scrolling through Netflix for what feels like hours without a clear sense of purpose, know that you aren’t alone.
We’ve tried to take some of the hard work on and save you from that endless scroll by picking out one movie that’s worth making time for this November. Woman of the Hour tells the true story of a woman who went on a dating game show in the 1970s, and almost found herself victimized by serial killer Rodney Alcala, who she chose to be her date. Here are three reasons the movie is worth checking out.
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It knows where to place the emphasis
Plenty of movies about serial killers wind up spending most of their running time devoted to the killer themselves and their psychology. Woman of the Hour takes the opposite approach, focusing instead on this killer’s various victims, which were all women.
It splits its time between its central character, a struggling actress who goes on a dating game show to raise her profile and decides to ask her own questions instead of the ones she’s been provided, and a series of vignettes in which we follow the killer’s other victims as they are drawn into his web and eventually killed.
In telling the story this way, the film’s primary focus turns toward the women who are victimized and then not believed by the men around them who claim they want to help.
It’s tense from moment one
Woman of the Hour stars Anna Kendrick, and it’s also the actress’s directorial debut. As it turns out, Kendrick knows what she’s doing. Woman of the Hour is rife with tension, even though most of its most explicit violence happens off screen.
Because we know exactly who the killer is by the time he’s introduced, the entire game show plot is rife with an understanding that, while the show’s other contestants might be a little misogynistic, they pale in comparison to the killer, who knows how to hide his various sinister proclivities.
It’s a genuinely crazy true story
Woman of the Hour is tense and riveting, and it has something clear to say about the way women are oppressed not just by killers but by all the men who don’t lift a finger to help them. The wildest thing about it, though, is that this actually happened.
A serial killer went on a game show in the middle of a killing spree that included at least five confirmed murders, and possibly dozens of others. Thankfully, the real-life contestant did not go on the date she promised to Alcala, recognizing that his vibes were less than ideal.
Woman of the Hour is streaming on Netflix.
