2023, directed by Anna Kendrick
Woman of the Hour is… such a weird movie. It’s based on the real life story of serial killer Rodney Alcala, but it’s not a documentary – it’s described as a crime thriller. It’s been criticised by one of his surviving victims as taking liberties with the truth (the supposed main character Sheryl never spent time with him one-on-one in reality but this is a major scene in the movie) but could have benefitted from fictionalising things more because most of the ongoing threads in the movie have no narrative pay-off before the end comes completely out of nowhere.
If this story was actually fictional, at least one of the women who shows up repeatedly throughout the film would have more of a role in his eventual capture. Or, well, any role. If it was actually a documentary, Anna Kendrick’s character would have been less important to the story, because aside from the ‘hook’ of having picked him out of three men in a dating show she had very little significance in the events of real life.
Perhaps it would have been more coherent if it had focused on Alcala himself as the central character rather than Sheryl, but on the other hand I think we’ve had quite enough of true crime that focuses on the killers while sidelining their victims. The issue is just that in this case, if you want to be accurate you need to change less, and if you want to tell a compelling story that actually feels like a satisfying story you need to change a lot more. Woman of the Hour fails to commit to either and ultimately suffers for it.