Woman of the Hour (2023)

Rated R, mostly because this is another movie about a serial killer who preys on women.  There is sexual assault in the movie and, while Kendrick does her darndest to not exploit this moment, it is quite visceral.  Also, couple this with the fact that this movie re-enacts sequences from The Dating Game, a show that languished in innuendo, the movie comes across as more than a little inappropriate.  Take all that I've written about this and add to the fact that I watched this on an airplane and you can imagine how awkward I felt.

DIRECTOR: Anna Kendrick

I need to write about movies immediately after I watch them.  It's unfair to the directors and the production team for me to write about a movie that I'm really struggling to remember bits for twelve days after I watched it.  I was on vacation.  I was walking my five kids with my wife around Europe.  I wasn't going to put that to a stop and find a business center in a hotel just so I can knock out about a thousand words (I'm guessing based on how long these things take to write sometimes) about a movie I watched on a plane.

Hey, before I get going, "Go, Anna Kendrick!"  I don't know why I need to cheerlead Anna Kendrick right now, but I want to.  Kendrick made a solid serial killer film with some amazing messaging.  Yes, like many actors-turned-directors, the film is a bit smaller than most.  I'll admit that I watched it because of the shorter runtime.  (I wanted to watch something on the plane before I went to bed.  It was a transatlantic flight, but I also had a meal coming and a sick TV.  Still, the movie is pretty solid.  While I may not rave about the movie to the hills, this was an accomplishment.  The movie straight up works.  And not just because it has Pete Holmes (as a surprise to me!) in a completely non-comedic role.

I've written so many of these that I can recognize trends in my thought processes.  Heck, it is almost a formula that I never intended to follow, but even the meta commentary on the writing process has become part of the formula.  With a lot of these horrific "based on a true story" stuff, I feel the need to be cognizant of the fact that this happened to real people.  There's something so morbid (and I'm not free of this criticism) that there is something inherently fascinating about the disturbing reality of true crime.  This is probably some pretty murky territory for Kendrick.  There's this core running through the movie that men tend to be serial killers not because women are incapable of being serial killers, but because men go through life with a constant state of indulgence.  Listen, a lot of this is me going to be playing suburban faux feminist.  I haven't done the heavy lifting.  I try to be an ally because it is the right thing to do and my life is incredibly comfortable.  But for all of my proselytizing, there is a real chance that I come across similar to Rodney. 

Rodney might be the most damning serial killer out there because --despite the fact that he's super gross when no one is looking --he plays the "woke" nice guy real well.  As time goes on, I find the archetype of evil nice guy the most compelling because he's the archetype that I'm constantly trying to keep myself in check with.  It's going to be a bit of "methinks he doth protest too much", but I'm very happy in my marriage and the notion of being sexually interesting for anyone other than my spouse seems exhausting.  But there was a time where I understood, in a very safe way, what Rodney full on feeds.  Rodney psychosis takes his frustration about being the "better choice" in male / female relationships and indulges his need to hurt women for his rejection.  That's not completely accurate.  Rodney is unabashedly crazy.  He murders for the joy of it all.  But what makes Rodney scary is not just that he's a monster.  He's scary because he's really good at faking not being monster and that's because there are many times when he does not view himself as a monster, as proven by the end of the film.

And I kind of hate that I'm writing about Rodney here so much because Sheryl --also played by Kendrick --is the protagonist of the film.  She is the one we are rooting for.  Half of the movie is us understanding the dramatic irony of her situation.  Is she going to say the wrong thing to set off Rodney?  I can't help that, despite the movie being named after Sheryl, with the allusion to The Dating Game's introduction to the contestant of the night, that Kendrick herself is almost more interested with Rodney.  Part of it is that Sheryl is the Nick Carroway of the story.  (I hate that a movie about how men are convinced of their own undeserved self-worth that I keep making comparisons to how the male characters are the most important elements in narratives.)  As much as we bond with Sheryl and worry for her health, especially if you don't know how the story plays out, her story is so thoroughly universal that it seems almost quaint compared to the trouble she gets in.

If we just analyze the Sheryl story, it is the story of Hollywood and sexism.  That is a story in itself.  I don't want to downplay what potential story is here, Sheryl's throughline is one of a close call.  While she is in control of how she's viewed on The Dating Game, her goal is to come out of that event with her dignity intact.  When she realizes that Rodney is a physical threat, she honestly only experiences the event for about five minutes.  Let's be generous.  Her danger sense (I really wanted to call it a Spidey Sense, but it minimizes the gravitas and the importance that Sheryl and women in that situation goes through) gives her an anxious hour.  But the actual confrontation between Sheryl and Rodney is only about a minute and change long.  And not only that, but anything that Sheryl does to protect herself ultimately doesn't save her.  It's the fact that the late night workers come out when they do.  So it's hard to give Sheryl the attention that the title of the film demands.  

Now, this sounds like I think the use of Sheryl as the grounding of the film is a mistake.  Again, I called her Nick Carroway.  The Great Gatsby is an incredible novel because it is through Nick's eyes that we see something fascinating.  What Sheryl does for the story is let us 1) see how normal a serial killer seems and 2) talk about what women do / need to do to survive in a world full of predators.  The reason that the film is centered on Sheryl is because Sheryl was on The Dating Game and she picked Rodney, a killer who should never have been on the show. 

Now, I don't know how much reality was in the audience sequence of the show.  One of the more compelling B-plots of the story was Laura trying to save Sheryl from the fate that seemed to be following her.  As much as this is a story about Rodney (a point I've beyond belabored), this is a story about how women could be much safer in America, but it's a pretty crappy society that doesn't allow that.  Laura tells security that they have a real problem on their hands and, like many suspense stories, some moron decides to ignore that threat.  But Kendrick formats the movies into vignettes.  One of the commonalities between Rodney's victims is the fact that these were women who didn't trust their instincts about Rodney, believing him to be simply an awkward guy.  

But the film's ending is what cemented my appreciation of the movie for me.  There's something darkly tragic about the end of the movie.  Amy, a teenage vagabond, gives Rodney the benefit of the doubt.  While unstated, Amy seems to be the most world-wise character in the film.  She's seen stuff that the other characters haven't.  I really have the vibe that the girl has had trauma in her life.  But beyond that, she's also a character who knows how to survive that trauma.  When Amy is raped, she knows that she would be murdered had she not changed the conditions of the whole situation.  It feels like Amy's story is the reason that Kendrick made the movie, not Sheryl's.  While Sheryl's story probably resonates with Kendrick from being a woman in Hollywood, Amy's story is the narrative that she wants women to walk away with.  It almost becomes a manual how to deal with serial killers.  

Okay, fun thing about how the sausage was made.  I started writing this three days ago.  I never put the conclusion on it and I don't know if I have the mental momentum to keep the previous thought going.  The long and short of it all is that Kendrick probably made the movie that she wanted to make.  It isn't bombastic.  It might have a bit too small of a story to justify a feature length film.  Instead, Kendrick understands that this is a movie about elements rather than a movie as a single narrative.