'Woman of the Hour' Review: Is the Killer Bachelor #1 or #2?

In Anna Kendricks “Woman of the Hour,” a spooky based-on-a-true-story drama about a 1970s serial killer's appearance in an episode of “The Dating Game,” one of the most telling images isn't a grisly murder scene (although there is one). It's the face of Pete Holmes.

Kendrick, making her directorial debut, plays an aspiring actress named Cheryl Bradshaw, who eventually becomes a contestant on this special “Dating Game” episode. At the beginning of the film, she vents her anger over a drink with a neighbor (Holmes) at the audition. After he makes an awkward pass, she recoils and he sits awkwardly, staring ahead in disappointment.

The tension of these encounters and the way women are forced to deal with and suffer from men's bruised egos heats up “Woman of the hour” a sometimes clumsily plotted but consistently insightful thriller about the fear of the female experience and the dark game of constantly weighing the threat of potential danger in men. The film begins streaming on Friday on Netflix.

Kendrick, working from a script by Ian McDonald, opens “Woman of the Hour” with a scene in the remote foothills of Wyoming. There, Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) playfully photographs a young woman (Kelley Jakle), but soon has his hands around her neck.

Although the film then mostly concerns itself with Cheryl chronicling “The Dating Game,” “Woman of the Hour” is interspersed with similarly gruesome encounters between Alcala and women. They follow a similar pattern. He is charming and even sensitive, but becomes violent at the first sign of rejection.

“Woman of the Hour” is not your typical dramatization of a true crime novel. The perspective of Alcala, who was convicted of killing seven women and girls in 1980 and died on death row in 2021, is not relevant here. It's the women he targeted.

Kendrick's film might have been a better, more exciting film if it had stayed in one timeline and taken all the drama out of the “Dating Game” recording. But by exposing Alcala from the start, “Woman of the Hour” becomes more about the horror of a murderer who was out in the open, even on national television. We watch with horror at how easily he fits in with Bachelor One and Bachelor Two – and even seems to be the most attractive of them all.

As Cheryl gets caught up in the showbiz maelstrom of “The Dating Game,” all of the show's sexist remarks and misogynistic underpinnings seem all the more sinister given Alcala's presence. The host, a fictional Jim Lange named Ed Burke, is played with skillful, flippant depravity Tony Hale. Kendrick keeps the camera trained on Cheryl's face in the makeup chair while Ed tells her not to act too smart right before the show. “You just have to laugh and smile over and over again,” he says.

There's a lot more sexism in the show. (One of Cheryl's cue cards reads, “My favorite hobby is kissing.”) The juxtaposition of a serial killer of women with Hollywood misogyny adds a powerful layer. (Kendrick has said that an audition exchange early in the film about on-camera nudity was taken verbatim from her own experience as a young actress.) This is especially true for viewer Laura (Nicolette Robinson), recognizes Alcala as the man who killed her friend. Her attempts to warn the producers are met with predictable responses.

Although Zovatto's performance is convincingly unsettling without being over the top, the dark, disturbed nature of Alcala is too much for “Woman of the Hour” to handle. This was a murderer whose path of heinous violence included the rape and near-murder of an 8-year-old girl and the murder of a 12-year-old who was cycling home from ballet class. The years of police and judicial failure that allowed Alcala to avoid incarceration for so long are only hinted at here.

“Woman of the Hour” will certainly lead many to look up this strange story. But Kendrick's achievement is to capture, from a woman's perspective, how difficult it can be to pick out a serial killer from an all-male cast.

“Woman of the Hour,” a Netflix release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language, violent content, some drug use and sexual references. Running time: 94 minutes. Three out of four stars.