It sounds like a set-up straight out of a pulpy genre movie: what if the man you were matched with on a kitschy 1970s dating TV show turned out to be a serial killer? But as it turns out, Anna Kendrick’s feature directorial debut Woman Of The Hour is based in all kinds of truths – not just emotional ones, but literal factual ones too. Set in 1978, the film also sees Kendrick step in front of the camera as Cheryl Bradshaw, who goes on The Dating Game and ends up bagging a date with Daniel Zovatto’s Rodney Alcala. Except, Alcala is a serial killer, who murdered several women in the late 1970s.
For Kendrick, Woman Of The Hour tapped thematically into territory she wanted to explore, drawing on her own experience of having been in an emotionally abusive relationship. “[With] this movie, I think the screenplay naturally explored that conundrum of, ‘How do you know you’ve chosen a safe person?’,” she tells Empire. “And that was something that I really focused on.” It’s a feeling that’s particularly present as Cheryl gradually unpicks Alcala’s mask. “It’s this balancing act of trying to figure out if there’s something dangerous about this person that you had assumed was trustworthy, and trying to find that out in a way that doesn’t let them know that you’re onto them,” she explains. “It’s this horrible paradox.”
The project, too, offered Kendrick a chance to face her own fear as a first-time filmmaker – stepping up as director, after Watcher’s Chloe Okuno left the project. “There was this horrible thought bubbling up inside of me that I kept trying to shove back down which was, ‘I think I want to do it, and I think I’m gonna pitch myself,’” says Kendrick. It was just the right time to enter the directing game.
Read Empire’s full Woman Of The Hour story in the 40 Years Of The Terminator issue, on sale now. Order a copy online here. Woman Of The Hour comes to Netflix from 18 October.