Anna Kendrick's directorial debut Woman of the Hour is a tense exploration of inescapable misogyny

Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut Woman of the Hour begins behind a camera. A woman is being photographed on a dusty hilltop against a piercingly blue sky. A photographer snaps photos of her as she talks about her recent turmoil. Most notably, her boyfriend abandoned her shortly after she found out she was pregnant. There’s a rich human being here. A person with endless dimensions and nuances. The male photographer, serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), only sees her as an object in his lens. These are the final snapshots anyone will ever take of her.

After this, Ian McDonald's screenplay moves to 1978 Los Angeles. Here, aspiring performer Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick) is struggling to get any work. Things have become so dire that she reluctantly accepts her agent’s offer to appear on the TV program The Dating Game. Having to make stale chit-chat with three concealed men is not Bradshaw’s idea of an ideal acting gig. Unbeknownst to her, though, one member of the trio is none other than Alcala. Hiding in plain sight is a killer of countless women. A handful of them get their stories briefly told in Woman of the Hour’s non-linear narrative structure.

Anna Kendrick, please step right up with Stanley Tucci, Dev Patel, Regina King, and Drew Barrymore in the pantheon of actors delivering stellar directorial debuts. Kendrick especially impresses in Woman of the Hour with her keen eye for executing tension. She and editor Andrew Canny deftly uncover the awkwardness and unspoken tension in so many interactions between men and folks belonging to marginalized genders. In real life, there’s this constant undercurrent knowing that everything could turn into a violent disaster in the blink of an eye. Woman of the Hour meticulously recreates that in cinematic form.

That’s not the only facet of reality intriguingly translated into cinematic confines. There are also recurring non-linear digressions away from Bradhsaw’s exploits. These focus on various people (largely women) encountering Alcala over the years. These storytelling priorities harken back to movies like Zodiac in filtering serial killer horrors through the eyes of their victims. Within Woman of the Hour, though, these cutaways also mirror typical commercial breaks that would’ve aired during The Dating Game. 1970s TV viewers wouldn’t have watched Cheryl Bradshaw’s guest spot uninterrupted. Neither do we.

McDonald’s script, though, uses these interludes to emphasize the humanity of people terrorized by Alcala rather than placate advertisers. It’s a storytelling detail deftly reinforcing the humanity of lives senselessly cut short that’s also super-specific to Woman of the Hour’s central storyline. Further impressive is how cross-cutting across time doesn’t dilute a tension-laced atmosphere, Part of that comes from the subtle emphasis on the societal rot underlining each of these segments. A multitude of perspectives are explored in Woman of the Hour. Yet each of the women (and one man) chronicled exist in a world brimming with disturbing norms.

An ominous serial killer can effortlessly get chummy with cops. Similarly, law enforcement is constantly useless in stopping Alcala, no matter what year it is. The innate devaluing of women is so rampant, meanwhile, that even ladies gleefully partake in it. “You know how teenage girls are these days,” one woman declares when somebody asks about a young girl’s safety. Dismissing the humanity of women and deferring to men, is the American standard. The various "women of the hour" in this feature never meet, save for Cheryl and Dating Game audience member Laura (Nicolette Robinson) briefly locking eyes. Yet they all exist in a deeply broken world. This consistent detail keeps the tension brewing effectively.

Woman of the Hour’s suspense informed by systemic misogyny gets even more suffocating and compelling once Bradshaw begins talking to those hidden bachelors. Out of the trio, Alcala is the one who exhibits the most thoughtfulness and unflinchingly acknowledges the humanity of women. Just hearing his words, Bradshaw remarks affirmative things like “not bad, bachelor number three.” A murderer with seething contempt for women lurks behind a seemingly chill exterior. As a filmmaker and performer, Kendrick gets transfixing material out of emphasizing the endless manifestations of monstrous men. To quote a recent Atlantic headline, “not all men, but any man.”

That creed informing so many women’s lives fuels truly gripping cinema here within Woman of the Hour. Also proving enthralling is the movie’s central performances, which include Kendrick as protagonist Cheryl Bradshaw. Here, Kendrick solidly utilizes both her bubbliness and knack for saying the most cutting things while maintaining a teeth-flashing grin. They’re qualities that make Bradshaw an instantly intriguing working-class protagonist. That latter facet of Kendrick’s acting style is deployed nicely when Bradshaw begins to take control of the questions she asks her various bachelors.

Given her work in movies like Up in the Air and A Simple Favor, it’s not like anybody needed reminders Kendrick is talented as an actor. If you did, though, the palpable conviction she brings to Bradshaw’s most intense moments (chiefly when she tells an ominous man to take his hand off her car) should do the trick. It’s quite impressive to see her flip that switch so effortlessly from a woman trying to escape her creepy roommate Terry’s (Pete Holmes) advances by apologizing to firmly telling a guy “I’m not going anywhere with you.” It’s a range Kendrick sells quite nicely.

Beyond her, Daniel Zovatto musters up terrific work as Alcala, particularly in depicting the guy’s constantly malleable personality. The biggest discovery of the movie, though, is Autumn Best. In her first-ever film role, she plays a runaway named Amy whom Alcala targets. A whole movie centered on Amy stealing coins from laundromats and surviving on her own would be absorbing thanks to Best’s skills with dialogue-free acting.

Visually, Zach Kuperstein does serviceable work, even if some shots in the Cheryl Bradshaw sequences needed more room to breathe. It's a problem that can be partially chalked up to Canny's editing. The constant cutting in these Tinseltown-set scenes lacks either preciseness or intentional jaggedness. Think of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and its big cocaine energy exuded by the camera’s inability to linger on one shot for long. That purposefulness sometimes evades Woman of the Hour’s visual scheme. Thankfully, key set pieces involving ordinary souls encountering Alcala are significantly more exact in their editing and framing. It just would’ve been divine for the entire feature to have those visual sensibilities.

An occasional lack of more dynamic imagery aside, Woman of the Hour is a remarkably entrancing thriller wringing tension out of male hostility. This element, like those nasty Zards McGruff used to warn people about, can lurk anywhere. Offices. Apartment complexes. A game show broadcast live to millions. Woman of the Hour’s consciousness of this dehumanization’s ubiquity doesn’t just put in touch with reality. It also informs a motion picture you can’t tear your eyes away from. In the pantheon of directorial debuts from actors turned directors, Anna Kendrick has, thankfully, NOT delivered her equivalent to Fool's Paradise.