Quick Synopsis: It’s 1970 and Sheryl Bradshaw is so desperate for TV time that her agent books her on The Dating Game, unaware that one of the male contestants is harbouring a dark and disturbing secret: he’s from Texas. Oh, and he kills people. That’s bad too.

Woman Of The Hour (or WOTH, pronounced to rhyme with cough) is like a six-dicked Calydonian boar, a strange beast you can’t turn away from. It’s helped by a truly fascinating story. This actually happened. In 1978, serial killer Rodney Alcala made an appearance on The Dating Game, and he did win, which has to be a real kick in the teeth of the guys who were rejected. Everything else about the story is fiction. The entire story of the woman who went out with him? Fake. The woman in the audience who reports the killer and is ignored? Fake. The host of the show is a complete dick? Fake (for this one specific person). A producer making creepy comments about Anna Kendrick whilst pointing at her breasts? Fa-oh wait, that’s real, happened to her when she was 19, which sadly meant she was too young to drink, so she couldn’t go to a bar, buy a bottle of drink then use the bottle to slit the throat of that producer.

I’m okay with that kind of approach to historical accuracy. This is mainly because it never pretends to be anything other than what it is; it is a fictional narrative that occurs during a real historical story. If it was presented with a subtitle like “The true story” then I’d object. The reality isn’t important, the story and the setting is. The setting is significant. This was a time when, according to the letter of the law, women were mostly equals (sometimes), but the reality was very different. Men still felt comfortable being sexually aggressive with female strangers, who would then be told to “take it as a compliment” or “stop complaining” when they mentioned it. It’s very different from now, I’ve spoken to many men on the subject and they all agree women are treated equally now. The time is just as much a character as the serial killer (now there’s a sentence I’ve never said before).

The other essential half of the jigsaw of WOTH is Anna Kendrick. This is her directorial debut and it’s pretty damn impressive. She does have a tendency towards being overly arty and “oooo look at this” as opposed to using the camera to tell a story. There are no moments which are “bad”, nothing which makes you think “Ooof, I wouldn’t have done that”, and more experienced directors have done that (A Quiet Place: Day One, for example, featured one of my least favourite shots of the year from a coherence standpoint, and that was from a guy with experience). I hope Kendrick continues to direct, and I’m curious as to what her next move would be. I’m hoping she continues to do stories she has a passion and personal interest in (she donated her fee from this movie to charity, because she’s lovely and a badass). She’s about 2 movies away from making an INCREDIBLE feminist AF drama which I will absolutely LOVE.

Her performance is good too. The moment where she calls everyone out on their misogyny is glorious to watch. I’ve seen some reviews state she was the wrong choice, and that she feels too modern for a 1970s character. To those people I say, you’re wrong. I won’t debate this, I won’t explain this, but you are wrong.

The weakest part, for me, is the narrative. The fact he was on a tv show (you know, the whole selling point of the film) doesn’t matter. It’s not his appearance on TV that leads to his downfall, his downfall wasn’t until the next year. So really, the main crux of the film is entirely inconsequential. It’s still a good watch, but I do wish that more things mattered, that the timeline was more coherent, and that the side characters were memorable. So much focus went on the “serial killer on a dating show”, that it feels that not enough effort was put on anything else in the narrative, so it feels incredibly underbaked.

That being said, there is one BRILLIANT scene that’s not set on the show. The date. Specifically, the aftermath when she’s creeped out by him in the car park. It’s CHILLING, and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on edge. It’s also (I imagine), a scene in which pretty much every woman alive has a “yeah that happened to me too. When? Well the first time was when I was 12, then the next time it was-” series of anecdotes which are similar.

In summary, an easy film to be impressed by. An easy film to be moved by. But also a film in which you can’t help but feel there’s something better from the creators in the future.