At last year’s Toronto film festival, Anna Kendrick played a woman crumbling within an emotionally abusive relationship in Alice, Darling, an unsettling psychodrama that proved revelatory for the star, typically associated with lighter fare. At the time she spoke about her uncomfortable connection to the material, having once been at the mercy of a controlling, noxious boyfriend, and there’s a similarly specific unease to her follow-up, the fact-based thriller Woman of the Hour, a film also focused on how the oppressiveness of gender dynamics can lead to horror.
This time, the horror is of a more tangible and gruesome kind, shown to us in short sharp bursts, flashbacks to the killings of Rodney Alcala, a charming photographer who preyed on women and young girls in the 1970s. In a bizarre twist, Alcala was also a contestant on hit ABC show The Dating Game and the day of his appearance makes up the majority of the movie. Kendrick plays Cheryl Bradshaw, the woman who chose him.
