Woman of the Hour

Director: Anna Kendrick
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Tony Hale, Nicolette Robinson, Pete Holmes, Autumn Best, Kathryn Gallagher, Kelley Jakle, Matt Visser, Jedidiah Goodacre
Running Time: 94 min.
Rating: R

★★★★ (out of ★★★★)

Zodiac meets Promising Young Woman and Late Night with the Devil in Anna Kendrick's directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, a gripping dramatization of a true crime case almost too impossibly bizarre to believe. While the basic details are out there, accompanying ones remain a bit of a mystery, making this an ideal story for deeper exploration. What most know is that in 1978 a serial killer appeared on TV's The Dating Game, but it turns out this frightening fact only scratches the surface, eventually revealing as much about the era's cultural attitudes as it does the perpetrator himself. 

If not for actual existing footage, it's easy to imagine this being written off as some kind of urban legend. Was he still committing murders at the time? Couldn't someone watching the show identify him? Did he win? Was there a date? What happened on it? Since many of those questions have gone publicly unanswered, Kendrick is afforded the opportunity to squeeze considerable suspense from real events. She and writer Ian McDonald fascinatingly suggest the killer is both everyone and no one, unexceptional enough to easily slip through the cracks. Lots of alarms should have gone off, but back then, the onus fell on women to be careful and nice, no matter how deadly the situation. 

It's 1978 Los Angeles and aspiring actress Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick) is striking out on auditions when she gets a call from her agent about potentially going on The Dating Game. Banking that this valuable exposure in front of a national television audience could result in a big break, Cheryl's excited but nervously skeptical, despite encouragement from irritating friend and neighbor Terry (Pete Holmes). 

On the day of the taping, Cheryl's prepped backstage before appearing on camera to question her mystery suitors, including "Bachelor #3," Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), a long haired photographer from Texas. But what Cheryl, producers and even the authorities don't know is that he's a prolific serial killer whose ongoing murders date back to the early seventies. 

Jumping between the episode and Rodney's brutal homicides, a portrait is painted of a violent psychopath in the vein of Ted Bundy or Ed Gein. But on the show he charms the studio audience and Cheryl, raising the likelihood she could actually end up picking this guy as her date. That is unless someone can come forward and connect him to these crimes.

Kendrick inventively uses the show as a framing device by surrounding it with flashbacks and flashforwards of Rodney targeting random young women. And while unconfirmed reports put his victim count at over a hundred, it stands to reason he encountered others who lived to see another day. Because of this, these scenes carry even more weight since we're unclear whether anyone survives until they fully play out. Some of his murders take place years before he appears on the show, while others, including an extremely pivotal one, occurs after. As a result, the film's structure and timeline becomes crucial in tracing the trajectory that lands him on stage with Cheryl.

The quiet, withdrawn Rodney methodically entraps his victims, making small talk and showering them with compliments before eventually convincing them to pose for him. And his photography becomes a major theme, tying into the natural human instinct to feel and be noticed, a vulnerability he preys on before the world sees those tactics in action on TV.  

The full scope of Rodney's depravity is displayed in the film's haunting desert opening while  photographing a woman named Sarah (Kelley Jakle) who opens up to him about a painful breakup. Zovatto's performance is scary in how he plays Rodney as weirdly off, but initially harmless until his tone, facial expressions and body language betray that, exposing his true intentions. Unfortunately, by then, it's too late. He earns their trust before going in for the kill, attempting to repeat this pattern with flight attendant Charlie (Kathryn Gallagher) and most memorably, young runaway Amy (Autumn Best). 

The constant misogyny and sexism Cheryl deals with is really what leads her to appear on a show so clearly beneath her, even as she comes to it well-armed from those terrible experiences. Whether being grilled about nudity on an audition or guilted into succumbing to her annoying neighbor's advances. Kendrick doesn't overplay her hand, presenting Cheryl's plight as business as usual for the period, trusting audiences to reach their own conclusions. 

Instructed by the show's pompous host Ed Burke (a brilliant Tony Hale channeling Richard Dawson) to just smile, laugh and look pretty so she doesn't seem smarter than the bachelors, Cheryl flips the script to take the upper hand. Much to his and the bachelors' chagrin, she milks those 15 minutes of fame by simply being authentic, even as two of the three suitors prove awful in different ways. Only one is sharp enough to keep up with her. And it's a shame who that is. 

Kendrick's quick, snappy, matter-of-factness has rarely been utilized as well on screen, as she plays Cheryl in a constant state of self awareness. She has no false illusions about this program's quality and what it could do for her career, bringing that same level-headed pragmatism to the eventual encounter with Rodney. There's also great unsung work from Nicollette Robinson as a woman with a past connection to him who's paralyzed by fear and judgment from others. How her character's mistreated and dismissed by the men around her goes a long way in explaining how Rodney not only evaded capture for years, but was cast on widely popular television show without a second thought.

The last thirty minutes (and particularly one parking lot scene) are terrifyingly tension filled, threatening just how bad things can possibly get. Since Kendrick spends much of the film establishing Rodney's M.O., it's only that much more impactful when he's finally thrown off course and needs to improvise. After meeting his match in a woman who knows how to turn the tables, she reads and manipulates him well enough to deserve a criminal psychology degree. And we believe it, mainly because these serial killers always have traumatic baggage to be exploited, but only if their potential victims can somehow stay alive long enough to find the trigger. 

As a director, Kendrick visually and thematically links the game show to these murders, all while delivering a lead performance equally effective in conveying that. Smart, shrewd and extremely lucky compared to the other women, Cheryl can't see herself as any of this when falsely defined by the superficial, condescending terms society ascribes to her. What starts as a last ditch effort to be "seen" on a program that's spawned hundreds like it instead reflects a systemic malignancy still resonating to this day. It all provides chilling context for a TV episode now very much remembered, though not for reasons anyone had originally intended.