Serial killer Rodney Alcala is suspected of murdering up to 130 women, according to Woman of the Hour, a new drama-cum-thriller now streaming on Netflix after premiering at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. But amidst a sea of similar killers in America throughout the last century, Alcala is mostly known for appearing as a contestant on an episode of the TV show The Dating Game, which is what the film devotes the majority of its running time.
Woman of the Hour marks the directorial debut of Anna Kendrick, who also takes the lead role of Cheryl Bradshaw (here credited as Sheryl), the bachelorette whom Alcala attempted to woo on TV. This isn’t Zodiac, despite a largely first-rate period recreation of Los Angeles in the 1970s; instead, Kendrick uses the story of the killer as a springboard to spotlight the kind of culturally-accepted misogyny that helped create a world where Alcala could freely operate.
Daniel Zovatto (The Pope’s Exorcist) is a revelation as Alcala, simultaneously frightening and pathetic, a deeply insecure man who presents as charming but lacks the basic humanity to sell the notion. His version of Alcala isn’t (only) a monster, but someone with traits we can almost grasp at; the script by Ian McDonald cannily presents him as a film buff who name drops Roman Polanski (who the real Alcala took a course under at NYU).
On The Dating Game, Alcala only needs to appear more charismatic than two other strangers that Sheryl cannot see. As she pops questions to a dunderhead and a conservative, Alcala is the one who manages to say the right thing; by now, he’s had a lot of experience telling women what he thinks they want to hear in order to get them alone.
Woman of the Hour depicts multiple murders committed by Alcala, but its scariest scene might be a (fictionalized) after-show drink with Sheryl. At a tiki bar by the studio, he no longer operates behind a wall of anonymity, and cannot even conduct a mundane conversation without giving off major creep vibes. Kendrick masterfully directs this sequence, never over-playing Alcala’s inherent malevolence; there’s no one thing he does to reveal himself, but the mask is finally off, and this frightening encounter is one most of us will be able to relate to.
Utilizing a non-linear narrative, Woman of the Hour eerily depicts a trio of encounters with Alcala intercut with his appearance on The Dating Game; murders committed in New York City in 1971 and Wyoming in 1973, and an encounter with a hitchhiker in San Gabriel in 1979.
Kendrick is excellent as Sheryl, but the script fails to make her character more than someone who had a brief encounter with a serial killer on TV; there’s too much Alcala in the narrative to give Sheryl her own story. But Woman of the Hour has a much more compelling protagonist in Autumn Best as the hitchhiker, Amy: she’s a street-smart runaway whose story ties into Alcala’s in a more dramatically satisfying (if largely fictionalized) fashion.
Woman of the Hour works best when it sticks to an understated matter-of-fact presentation, and allows the audience to pick up on the implicit gender bias of the era. But it also has a tendency to proselytize, including fictionalized scenes on the set of The Dating Game where Sheryl improvises some questions, and a member of the audience (Nicolette Robinson) recognizes Alcala but fails to convince anyone of his threat. These scenes can feel disingenuous contrasted against the real menace the movie more subtly crafts during its best moments.
Alcala had been committing brutal crimes for a decade by the time he appeared on The Dating Game, had served time in prison, was known to police and suspected of multiple homicides, but to everyone watching at home, he was just another face on TV. Woman of the Hour is a stark reminder that the smiling faces we encounter every day could be hiding true monsters.
