Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction. The fact that a serial killer was on the popular national television show in the 1970s, The Dating Game, is just as surprising as finding out a murderer has a small scene in the 1970s horror classic, The Exorcist—apparently, people weren’t being vetted much in the ‘70s. I've been aware of the real-life events involving Rodney Alcala and Sheryl Bradshaw for some time, but it still didn’t seem any less strange when I thought about it. Someone else obviously thought it a strange enough story to be worthy of retelling in a movie, as that is precisely what Woman of the Hour is about. Well, it’s about that and some other things…

Pros

Acting, cinematography, editing, and direction are all good
Some solid, tense moments
Only 95 minutes

Cons

The lack of a real through-line plot is noticeable, even with the smart editing
Yet another movie that seems to have an agenda in mind when portraying the sexes
Various liberties were taken with the real events that are significant in the film; you might notice if you’re familiar with the real story

Plot & Thoughts

Woman of the Hour focuses on two primary individuals: Sheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick) and Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto). Sheryl is a woman trying to get an acting break in Hollywood. She’s struggling to get by. She’s having no luck at auditions and is a bit of a loner, with her only friend being her male neighbor, Terry (Pete Holmes). Her agent lines her up with a chance to go on The Dating Game as a method of getting seen, and after an awkward night out with Terry, she decides to take it. Meanwhile, Rodney Alcala is going around being a smooth-talking nice guy who then rapes and murders unsuspecting women. Eventually, the two cross paths on The Dating Game, and Sheryl’s future is put into question if she is unable to recognize the danger of Alcala.

The movie tells its story out of order, seamlessly jumping back and forth between instances in which Alcala interacts with his victims, Sheryl on The Dating Game, and a few other side characters. The editing does a good job of making this seem natural, which is good because it is absolutely necessary to keep Woman of the Hour interesting. Had the events been told in chronological order, it would be that much more apparent that there isn’t really a plot or a story with any arcs to tell. The most we get is Sheryl’s story about how her experience in Hollywood and The Dating Game is enough to make her leave it behind, but that’s all surface-level material.

While you would expect Woman of the Hour to be about Sheryl, I’d argue it’s more about Alcala and, well…something else, but we’ll get to that. Alcala occupies more of the screen, and we, as the audience, are subjected to multiple scenes in which he is performing various grisly acts. Daniel Zovatto does a commendable job playing a character who is mentally unstable but also charming. He’s able to evoke that calm dangerousness in a way that is mostly subtle enough to fool a regular person for only so long. Whenever he’s around, the tension is gradually building as he appears more and more likely to attack.

Before I move on to my main issues with Woman of the Hour, I’d also like to mention the two minor sub-plots as they were significant events—one of which plays into what I’ll be talking about next. There is a woman named Laura (Nicolette Robinson) who is at the filming of The Dating Show and recognizes Alcala as the last man seen with her friend who was raped and killed. She has a panic attack seeing him on the set and flees to her car to think about whom she could contact to alert authorities. Her boyfriend asks her what’s wrong, and she poorly conveys her concerns as he stupidly rebukes her claims for no logical reason. There is also a young runaway named Amy (Autumn Best), whom Alcala befriends. She shares multiple scenes with him, and her story is scattered throughout the film until its conclusion at the end.

Now, with all that out of the way, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t really like Woman of the Hour, and you could potentially guess why based on the subtitle of this review. I don’t think it was very subtle, but you could potentially miss the subtext and messaging of this movie if you’re not paying attention. The real audience for this movie is people who do not like men and who want to have that negative opinion reinforced with examples of men sucking and women being victimized by them. Don’t get me wrong, there are endless lists of examples of men being terrible in real life, including in the case of Rodney Alcala, who avoided jail time due to authorities not believing the stories of his victims and witnesses. However, Woman of the Hour tells its story in a very biased manner and portrays men in almost a cartoonishly negative light, especially in the portions of the film that were fictional.

First, let’s start with the potential suitors on the game show. Obviously, Ancala is the worst of the worst, being a murdering psychopath, but what about the other two men? Well, Bachelor 1’s dialogue mostly serves as a method of demonstrating that he’s stupid. At some point, Sheryl picks up on his cranial density and adjusts her questions from the studio-provided questions to further mock his inability to answer questions well or to sound like he has a triple-digit IQ. He’s a stereotypical dumba$$ jock who gets mocked for his idiocy while Sheryl’s act of independence and defiance in the face of the arrogant male TV host is applauded. Bachelor 2, on the other hand, is a different stereotypical male in that he has requirements for cup sizes to consider a woman attractive. If they don’t quite make the cut, he’s willing to let them perform fellatio on him as a benevolent opportunity for the A & B cups out there. So we have a moron, a misogynist, and a maniac as the options. Great! I haven’t seen the original footage of the real episode, but I’m going to assume the other two contestants were not quite as cartoonishly lame as the caricatures in this movie.

Unfortunately, the negative male examples are not limited to the contestants on the show. Every guy in this movie sucks in some way or another. Sheryl’s neighbor, Terry, manages to guilt her into sleeping with him after a flirtatious attempt he made was denied, and he puts on a rude, pouty face. The host of the show is an arrogant goon who believes things should be done his way. A security officer to whom the witness, Laura, attempts to inform about Ancala doesn’t take her story seriously and intentionally tricks her in a cruel and unrealistic manner. Even Laura’s boyfriend, Ken (Max Lloyd-Jones)—arguably the only good guy in the movie because he apologizes to Laura later—still has to transgress enough to apologize in the first place by mansplaining to Laura that she might be wrong about her suspicions.

Ken’s dismissal of Laura’s concerns was actually the point where my opinion started to turn, and I picked up on all the messaging. It is patently absurd how he reacts to Laura’s distress. I would assume that he wouldn’t normally see his girlfriend have a panic attack, leave a TV studio in a rush, and then claim that someone on the show was the person who most likely murdered her friend. How often does Laura accuse people of murder? Is it often enough that you would be so skeptical of what she’s saying that she needs to be more than 90% certain? Why would you not just go to the police immediately just to be safe? I guess it’s more realistic for a guy to sit there and tell a frantic woman that she’s just being hysterical and wrong.

Look. I get that men do terrible things and that a lot end up as monsters. I’m just bored with the one-sided argument about the sexes in movies for the sake of a “you go, girl!” or “men are such pigs” moment. It was my main issue with Men. It was a significant issue I had with Prey. There is not one decent guy portrayed in this movie for more than a minute; they’re all bad in some way, while the women get to be the smart and morally superior individuals. At least in the Netflix film about Ted Bundy, there was a guy who was trying to do the right thing by helping out Bundy’s fiancée when she was down on her luck.

TL;DR

Woman of the Hour is a well-acted, well-shot, well-edited movie that manages to be engaging for its 95-minute runtime. It’s based on an interesting real story, and it had the potential to be an extremely compelling thriller. For some people out there, it still will be. Unfortunately for me, however, the combination of crappy behavior from the various men in the movie, the fact that there’s not any real plot or complete story arcs, the message-reaffirming dialogue that the women have with each other, and the segment in which the rest of the studio practically cheers on how Sheryl is making a mockery of the bachelors were more than enough clues to tell me what the real point of this movie was. It doesn’t make the film unwatchable, but it certainly disappointed me to be watching yet another movie with an agenda, and it made me less interested in the story it was trying to tell as a result.

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