Too many television series and films that sit in the thriller or crime genres are heavily focused on violence against women as a core part of the plot. Many films and TV shows involve women being assaulted, raped or killed and there are too many crime shows to count that have platformed storylines reflecting the horrific reality that so many women experience in their lives. So, when I heard a new true crime thriller, Woman Of The Hour, was being released on Netflix this month, I was a little sceptical. Would this just be another story where women have little to no storyline apart from being killed by a man? Refreshingly, no.

Woman Of The Hour manages to do what very few films before it have tried and failed to do: platform the voices and experiences of women in a story about a real serial killer and gendered violence. The film follows the true story of Rodney Alcala, who was convicted of the murders of several women but years earlier, appeared on the dating TV show The Dating Game. On the show, Alcala was picked by contestant Cheryl Bradshaw for a date which, in real life, never happened. But in the fictional adaptation, Anna Kendrick imagines what might have happened to Cheryl and Rodney if the date had taken place.

Directed by Kendrick, Woman Of The Hour alludes to or shows a glimpse of the violence to get the point across but doesn’t ever go too far that she’s showing senseless violence and murder on screen. The audience can understand and feel what is happening to Alcala’s victims without visually portraying and exploiting their deaths. In fact, in the entirety of the film, we never see a woman get killed. But Kendrick is still able to convey the fear and tension of the women’s experiences through the pacing and physical and bodily awareness of the film.

Like some other true crime films, this also could’ve been a story where its villain was glorified and their experiences and behaviours centred – at the expense of his victims. But in Woman Of The Hour, that is certainly not the case. Yes, Rodney Alcala (played by Daniel Zovatto) is a significant part of the film but it’s Kendrick’s Cheryl Bradshaw and all the women Alcala targeted who are the real focus of this story. Even the film poster is an image of Cheryl in the light and Rodney in the dark where we can’t even see his face, just a shadowy figure standing behind Cheryl.

Woman Of The Hour has a non-linear structure to it – where we go between different timelines – but the majority of the film focuses on the episode of The Dating Game that Rodney and Cheryl appeared on. What I also found interesting and a smart twist on the original events is that Kendrick flips the script a little when it comes to Cheryl asking the three bachelors her questions. Originally, these were questions based in misogynistic stereotypes and sexual innuendos but in the film, Kendrick’s character decides to swap out the show’s questions with her own and replace them with more feminist questions.

A particularly powerful scene is where Cheryl asks the three contestants, “what are girls for”, which, of course, attracts some pretty sexist answers. “Girls are for guys and having fun with” is the first bachelor’s response and “girls are for wining and dining” is the second response, but Rodney’s response is the most measured out of the three: “I guess I’d have to say that that’s up to the girl”.

Woman Of The Hour is a brilliant comment on the more ‘casual’ misogyny as well as the fatal side of gendered violence (both in the 1970s and present day) and I’m hopeful that this will be the start of women making true crime films and shows that aren’t bloody and exploitative but actually centre the lives of the women affected.

Woman Of The Hour is now streaming on Netflix

Image: Netflix