I never knew there was an actual serial killer that appeared on a 1978 episode of The Dating Game, and that he actually won. That’s a killer hook. The problem with Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s debut as a director, is that there isn’t really a movie here as presented. Because the game show segment can only last so long, we get the creepy first date, that never happened in real life, and watch Kendrick playing our lucky lady with mounting dread. A moment where the killer requests that she re-read the phone number she hastily gave him by memory, because she should know her number, is terrifically tense, as is the scene of him following her to her car. The problem is that this first date can only last so long, just as the cheesy TV game show segment can only last so long, so the movie has to provide extra back-story to fill the time. We get several past encounters with the killer’s unfortunate victims, all played quite unnervingly and seriously. The woman of the hour is less Kendrick getting her fleeting spotlight on TV, and an anecdote to impress people at parties for the rest of her life, than the survivor who eventually leads to the killer’s arrest. Amazingly, at the time of his TV appearance, he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List but there wasn’t a searchable database, so he clumsily got to keep committing murders, including while out on bail. It’s a harrowing story, but is it one best told through the gimmick structure of the game show appearance? If you were going this route, perhaps best to treat the material like a slow-burn stage play, starting with the first date, and watch in real time as it gets awkward and our heroine begins to have her suspicions that this man does not mean her well. Instead, the game show segments are goofy and broad and the least important moments in the stretched-thin film. There might be a movie with this subject, but I’m not sure that Woman of the Hour is it.

Nate’s Grade: C+