Woman of the Hour is most effective when it treats the danger around Rodney Alcala not as a puzzle about a notorious killer, but as a reality women have to assess in ordinary encounters. Anna Kendrick’s feature-directing debut makes the 1978 Dating Game appearance its chilling anchor, then builds a broader, sometimes uneven thriller around the women whose lives intersect with Alcala’s. The result is thoughtful and tense, though its interwoven timelines do not always sharpen the story.
What is Woman of the Hour about?
Set in 1970s Los Angeles, the film follows aspiring actor Cheryl Bradshaw, played by Kendrick, as she appears on the television matchmaking show The Dating Game. One of the eligible bachelors is Rodney Alcala, played by Daniel Zovatto, who would later be convicted of murders. Tony Hale is among the principal cast; Ian MacAllister McDonald wrote the screenplay. Netflix classifies the film as a drama and thriller, and AGC Studios lists its credits and premise on the Netflix title page and AGC Studios film page.
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The premise is not a hypothetical twist: Alcala appeared on the show in 1978, and Bradshaw chose him. The film uses that public event to explore the uneasy gap between a charming performance and the risk someone may be hiding.
Does the film work as a thriller?
It shifts attention from the killer to women’s calculations
The film’s strongest choice is its point of view. Rather than organizing every scene around Alcala’s cleverness or mythology, it gives weight to women navigating situations in which refusing, leaving, or pushing back can carry its own social risk. That perspective makes the suspense less about whether a killer will be caught than about how danger can be difficult to recognize—and how women are expected to manage men’s reactions while trying to stay safe.
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#1 Best Overall
The Associated Press called it “a sometimes awkwardly plotted but consistently insightful thriller about the anxiety of the female experience and the grim game of constantly weighing the threat of potential danger in men.” That is a critic’s assessment, but it captures the film’s central strength: the menace is not confined to the crimes. It also sits in everyday interactions and in the pressure to remain agreeable. Read the AP review.
The cross-cutting creates tension, but not always momentum
Woman of the Hour intercuts the dating-show story with episodes of Alcala’s violence and encounters involving other women. The approach broadens the film’s scope beyond the television set, but the strands do not always join into a single steadily escalating line of suspense. The AP review likewise found the plotting sometimes awkward and suggested that concentrating on one timeline might have built tension more effectively.
That looseness is a trade-off rather than a fatal flaw: the film is less interested in a clean procedural march than in the pattern of threat surrounding Alcala. Still, viewers looking for tightly engineered thriller mechanics may find the shifts interrupt the momentum.
Kendrick’s performance and direction share the same restraint
Kendrick directs and plays Bradshaw, keeping the story’s center of gravity with a woman facing a public choice under artificial studio lights and private uncertainty. The performance is controlled rather than showy, which suits a film concerned with how much a person can know from a brief encounter. It also makes the distinction between Bradshaw as a historical person and the character the film constructs especially important: the movie offers a dramatization, not privileged access to her private thoughts.
Rank #3
What is true, and what did the film change?
The central televised event is documented, but Woman of the Hour is a dramatized thriller, not a documentary reconstruction of every scene. Netflix’s acquisition announcement identifies Bradshaw as the bachelorette and Alcala as the bachelor she selected. Netflix’s announcement confirms that core detail.
| Detail | What is established | How the film handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Alcala on The Dating Game | He appeared on the show in 1978, and Bradshaw chose him, according to Netflix’s acquisition announcement. | The real appearance supplies the film’s central premise. |
| Bachelor number | The real contestant was Bachelor Number One, according to the Los Angeles Times fact-versus-fiction account. | The film presents him as Bachelor Number Three; Bradshaw still selects him. |
| After-show meeting | Little is publicly known about Bradshaw, and the sources do not establish such a meeting as historical fact. | The film imagines a post-show encounter between Bradshaw and Alcala, as TIME explains in its account of the true story. |
Those changes matter because the film invites viewers to feel the danger of Bradshaw’s situation while filling gaps in the public record. Its imagined scenes can serve the drama, but they should not be mistaken for verified episodes in her life.
Rank #4
What do the case figures mean?
Legal outcomes provide a firmer record than speculation about how many people Alcala may have harmed. TIME reported that Alcala was sentenced to death in California in 2010 for five killings of women and girls, received further New York sentences in 2013 for two murders, and died on death row in 2021. Netflix’s Tudum coverage summarizes his convictions as seven murders in two states and says he was suspected of more.
These are reported convictions and sentences, not a reliable total of victims. The film’s subject may invite questions about the full scale of Alcala’s crimes, but the available figures should not be stretched into a definitive victim count.
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The AP review reports an R rating for language, violent content, some drug use, and a sexual reference. It also describes gruesome encounters. The violence is part of the film’s depiction of danger, but its intensity may make it a poor fit for viewers seeking a restrained or low-violence drama.
Where can you watch Woman of the Hour?
Netflix lists the film on its official title page; AP reported that streaming began there on October 18, 2024. Catalog availability can vary by country and change over time, so check the Netflix page for your market. A Blu-ray edition is documented by Blu-ray.com, though that listing does not establish current stock, price, or regional compatibility for a specific buyer.
Who should watch it?
Choose Woman of the Hour if you want a true-crime-inspired thriller that asks what danger feels like from women’s side of an encounter, rather than making the killer’s mystique its main attraction. Kendrick’s direction gives that perspective real purpose, and the dating-show premise is an unnerving frame for it. Go in expecting dramatized scenes, some structural unevenness, and disturbing violence—not a documentary or a perfectly streamlined suspense film.
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