'Woman of the Hour' review: Anna Kendrick's directorial debut spotlights the Dating Game Killer

The harrowing story of Dating Game Killer Rodney Alcala boasts a depressingly long list of victims, a series of infuriating failures of the police, and a conclusion that is grim and far from satisfying. Suffice to say, it's pretty shocking that his crimes are the subject that Pitch Perfect's Anna Kendrick has chosen for her directorial debut, Woman of the Hour.

Pulling double-duty on the film, the comedic actress brings her plucky persona to one of the lead roles, playing the unwitting Dating Game bachelorette who peppers the undiscovered serial killer with bawdy questions — much to the delight of a nationwide audience also oblivious to his horrid homicidal streak.

The script by Ian MacAllister McDonald presents plenty of on-brand scenes for Kendrick, from a humiliating audition with a pair of comically bored casting directors to a deeply awkward interaction with a sex-pest neighbor, to a chance to dazzle under the studio spotlights of a popular TV game show. But how does Kendrick's brand of humor connect with the grisly tale of the Dating Game Killer?

It doesn't.

What's the buzz about Woman of the Hour?

Kendrick's directorial debut premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival amid a wave of other actor/helmer productions, ranging from Taika Waititi's fumbled sports comedy Next Goal Wins, Michael Keaton's mind-bending thriller Knox Goes Away, Viggo Mortensen's somber Western The Dead Don't Hurt, Patricia Arquette's wobbly drama Gonzo Girl, and Chris Pine's bellyflopped comedy-noir Poolman (just to name a few!) Critics out of the first screenings of Woman of the Hour were spreading the word that Kendrick's true crime adaptation was a must-see and maybe the best of this particular crop of movies. Then again, considering the mixed to negative reviews of the aforementioned films, that's not saying much.

Some have compared Woman of The Hour to Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, a darkly comedic thriller that earned its writer/director an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. However, the similarities between the two films are superficial: Both deal with rape culture, involving a plotline in which women are sexually assaulted and/or murdered by men within a patriarchal society that aims to give the latter the benefit of the doubt, whatever the cost. (Spoiler: The cost is women's lives.) Both films are directed by women. (Only Promising Young Woman is written by one.) End of list.

Where Promising Young Woman offered a stylish and provocatively twisted revenge fantasy, Woman of the Hour delivers a wobbly retelling of a true crime story with a thread of showbiz comedy. The former film centers its plotline on an angry avenging angel who lures in her predatory prey with a drunken demeanor or smeared lipstick, visually critiquing the victim-blaming tropes survivors encounter in real life. By contrast, Woman of the Hour doesn't have a central heroine but divides itself among a handful of victims presented as genre tropes: a scrappy teen runaway (Autumn Best), a traumatized witness (Nicolette Robinson), a too-trusting flight attendant, and aspiring actress Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick). While the film zips back and forth across Alcala's terrible timeline, Cheryl readies to go on the Dating Game not to look for love but to score her big break. Could her professional ambitions get her killed? Kendrick's film seems to ask.

Woman of the Hour is two movies clumsily stitched together.

Cheryl's thread follows her throughout her frustrations as a struggling actress in Los Angeles, ducking the spirit-crushing remarks of men in power, dodging unwanted kisses, and battling back against sexist bullies using only her wit and a smile wielded like a shield. In such scenes, Kendrick seems at home. As a performer, she's walked the line of chipper yet biting comedy from Pitch Perfect to Into The Woods and A Simple Favor. And it's wicked fun to watch her face off with a surly Tony Hale as a combative Dating Game host.

A gruesome cold open shows from the start how Alcala operates. So, while Cheryl deals with annoying but relatively harmless threats from men around her, the audience knows what she does not: Doom looms. The call for The Dating Game gig is not one of opportunity but bad fortune.

Perhaps Kendrick purposely put herself into this familiar role so that audiences could understand how even the quirky heroine of a comedy might be caught up in the trap of such a deceptive serial killer. Through this thread, Kendrick shows how Alcala hid in plain sight. However, this section of the film doesn't convincingly connect to the other women's narratives, in part because those characters are so barely developed that their scenes play like something on Investigation Discovery: a swift setup of sweetness before being savagely killed.

To the credit of Autumn Best, while her pugnacious runaway is thinly sketched on the page, her screen presence is undeniably mesmerizing. You root for her even as the movie gives you every reason to think hope is pointless. However, the other women depicted in the last hours — or even minutes — of their lives are given even less-caring characterization. All of them fall into the same aesthetic framework of '70s beauty, with long hair, vaguely bohemian babe vibes, and an attitude that is tentatively self-empowered. They are introduced long enough to be shown as lovely, before their smiles are perverted to screams under the glare of Alcala's menace.

Anna Kendrick fumbles in true crime storytelling.

Kendrick has no distinctive voice in depicting violence. In Zodiac, David Fincher stoically depicted detailed scenes of slaughter to display to his audience the cold-blooded nature of the attacks. Though there is little gore and much of the assaults happen off-camera in Woman of the Hour, Kendrick indulges in close-ups of the women screaming, their hands bond tightly, their feet kicking helplessly. Far from distinctive, such scenes play like something out of any random slasher film, with shots of yowling victims being dragged out of frame and to their annihilation. It's a sickening spectacle.

Vexingly, by favoring these cliched setups of introducing sexually attractive and confident young women, only to show them slaughtered for letting a male stranger into their lives, Kendrick's approach reduces these sisters in suffering — some of whom are based on real people, like Cheryl herself — into cautionary tales. Don't hitchhike! Don't let a stranger into your home! Don't follow a creep to a second location!

As true crime media evolves, there's been a push from activists and audiences to focus on the victims or the heroes over glamorizing the killer. To be fair, Kendrick doesn't seem interested in Alcala's motives or background. Actor Daniel Zovatto offers a low-boil portrayal of the smirking serial killer, revealing how a bit of kindness might be a hook. Woman of the Hour doesn't fall prey to treating Alcala as special or especially clever, mostly just bold enough to trust in institutional misogyny to not only ignore all his red flags but also the women who would speak out against him. However, the script cherry-picks his story to package a concise yet grisly thriller with that oh-so-marketable true crime edge. Yet it tells us nothing new — about rape culture, police apathy, or even Alcala and his victims.

Worse yet, Woman of the Hour manufactures a fictional climax whole cloth in a sweaty bid for a satisfying ending. With so much of this story being stranger than fiction but still true, audiences may well assume this conclusion is fact. Yet McDonald has dreamed up a fantasy finale that isn't even believable within the world he and Kendrick have built. In a film where police are repeatedly presented as impotent and uncaring, it's outrageous to show them victoriously sweeping in, sirens blazing, to save the day. This creation provides a solace the real story does not, and an ending that feels cheap and even insulting.

Far from the thought-provoking narrative within Promising Young Woman, Woman of the Hour plays to preconceived notions without complication: All men are bad, ranging from rapists and killers to creeps or incompetent cops to disappointing boyfriends and failed allies. Women, on the other hand, are victims, gossips, or witnesses.

"What are girls for?" Cheryl playfully asks her bachelors, who mostly flub their replies. Kendrick's film fares no better answering that query.

Woman of the Hour was reviewed out of its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.