WOMAN OF THE HOUR - Mark Reviews Movies

Woman of the Hour, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 17, 2024

That an active serial killer somehow was on a nationally televised game show is a curious and frightening bit of both TV and true-crime trivia. The story is made into much more by star and first-time director Anna Kendrick's Woman of the Hour, which creates a tapestry of women's fears about the dangerous potentials of men around that event. It's a film filled with encroaching dread, a potent sense of sorrow for the dead, and a degree of outrage that's emphasized by simply telling this tale the way it happened.

The man in question is Rodney Alcala, who officially murdered eight women or girls over the course of about a decade. The actual number of victims is almost certainly higher. A staggering coda to the film, which also explains why the climactic event of Ian McDonald's screenplay is not the end of this story, proposes that Alcala may have raped and/or murdered 130 people or more. It's a believable figure. A wanted man who intentionally put himself in the public spotlight must have believed he was invulnerable to the reach of the law and other form of justice that exists in this world.

Rodney is the connective tissue of the narrative, and as played by Daniel Zovatto, he is a genuinely terrifying presence. To look at him, moving around the country during the 1970s and searching for victims, is to think little of him.

He appears quiet and unassuming, carrying a camera and acting like any amateur or professional photographer on the hunt for the right shot might. When he speaks, Rodney sounds polite, thoughtful, and even a bit compassionate within the appropriate circumstances. He's often downright charming, in fact, and never more so than while answering questions on "The Dating Game," where he comes across as a breath of fresh air next to a couple of guys who make it clear they only have one thing on their minds. Rodney does, too. He's just better at hiding it.

By the time he appears on the show, we already know Rodney is capable of killing and has murdered at least twice before his national TV appearance. The first crime we witness happens in the remote hills of Wyoming, where he has convinced a young woman (played by Kelley Jakle) to pose for him against a landscape at sunset. She tells her story—of going on a road trip from Texas with her boyfriend, who unceremoniously dumped her.

Rodney listens. He seems to care and consoles this woman, and when she's most vulnerable and trusting of this man, that's when he strikes. The scene, like the other depictions of the crimes in this story, is violent but not explicit. Kendrick knows she needs to communicate the extent and cruelty of these murders, and she does so in close-ups of hands and legs struggling. The film, however, treats the victims as more than that—even if they appear in only one scene. That sense of humanity, no matter how brief it may be, emphasizes the sheer absence of it in Rodney.

There are two primary narratives within the broader scope of these crimes. The first belongs to Sheryl (Kendrick), a struggling actor in 1978 Los Angeles. Her first scene is at an audition, where a couple of casting directors speak in belittling ways about her as if she isn't in the room. With her career ambitions at an impasse, Sheryl confides in her fellow-actor neighbor Terry (Pete Holmes), who becomes sulky when Sheryl turns down another drink at the bar and flinches when he moves to touch her face. Even before she turns up as a contestant on "The Dating Game" at the advice of her agent, Sheryl's already dealing with men who assume power over her or try to hide what they really want from her.

The other main subplot is set some months later and follows Amy (Autumn Best), a teenage runaway who has arrived outside L.A. and is trying to scrape by a living. Rodney spots her, pays her compliments, and says she would be the perfect subject for a photo shoot. Amy agrees, and as they drive out to the desert, the two talk about their pasts, their families, and hints of old pains.

Both Sheryl and Amy's stories play as thrillers on the surface, because we know what Rodney is capable of doing and how he operates. He has been operating for some time when the two women encounter him, as the opening scene and a killing in a Manhattan apartment, where he helps a flight attendant (played by Kathryn Gallagher) move furniture into her new apartment, show. There's always a moment, at some point before Rodney acts, that reveals what's beneath his gregarious façade. The women realize it too late, and while at the office of an L.A. newspaper where he openly shows an album of photos of some of his victims, neither the majority of the staff nor the police catch on to the meaning behind those photographs.

This is, presumably, how the real Alcala evaded capture for so long—a terrible combination of phony but too-convincing charm and the simple fact that nobody wanted to believe such an unthinkable possibility. There's also, though, another side to it, represented by Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who's in the audience at the taping of "The Dating Game." She recognizes Rodney as the creepy guy who was the last one to be seen with her friend before she was murdered. As the intelligent and inherently skeptical Sheryl puts the other contestants in their place and falls for Rodney's charms—as does pretty much everyone else on set and in the audience—on the show, Laura scrambles to find one person who will believe her.

Whether or not anyone does, of course, is a foregone conclusion, because the film has already informed us that Rodney continues after his date on national TV. Beneath the external workings of a thriller in and the thematically rich nature of the material, Woman of the Hour is especially potent in how it embodies a sense of hopelessness in its very core. The simple truth of it is that this man got away so many times and for so long because nobody cared or listened until it was too late—possibly more than a hundred times so.

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