Last year, Anna Kendrick starred in Mary Nighy’s disquieting drama of abuse Alice, Darling. The actress played a woman undone by her partner’s psychological manipulations, pulling from her own experiences in an abusive relationship to shape the character. Her performance — sensitive, gripping — sustained the film’s atmosphere of dread.
In Woman of the Hour, Kendrick builds on the work she started in Alice, Darling — but now she is also behind the camera for this unnerving dramatization of serial killer Rodney Alcala’s appearance on a dating game show while in the midst of his murder spree. Woman of the Hour, which premiered at TIFF before its Netflix acquisition. is an ambitious attempt to subvert true-crime genre expectations by giving voice to the survivors and victims of Alcala’s rampage.
