At first glance, Netflix’s Woman of the Hour is yet another true crime fictionalisation that plays to our preoccupation with American serial killers of decades past. Directed by Anna Kendrick, who also plays the female protagonist Sheryl Bradshaw, the film reconstructs the crimes of serial rapist and murderer Rodney Alcala, aka the “dating game killer”. Alcala famously appeared on (and won) a television matchmaking show in 1978 amid a years-long killing spree.
The film examines historical sexual violence at both the individual and institutional level. It exposes the intense physical and psychological cruelty Alcala inflicted on his victims, as well as the cruelty and misogyny of the patriarchal culture that enabled such behaviour. Woman of the Hour is a groundbreaking text: it’s the first feminist true crime film to achieve commercial success since the #MeToo movement gained momentum in 2017.
Seeing and being seen Woman of the Hour inverts the sadistic and voyeuristic “ male gaze ” of traditional true crime by obliging viewers to identify with the female victim rather than the male perpetrator. As film theorist and gender studies expert Sarah Projanksy observed in her influential book Watching Rape : Depictions of sexual violence in most horror and crime thrillers run the risk of extending and reproducing eroticised violence against women, even when victims fight back. But Kendrick’s directorial debut doesn’t romanticise Alcala or glorify his crimes.
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