The terrifying story of a serial killer

Hollywood loves nothing more than true crime stories about a serial killer, but Anna Kendrick’s new film puts its money where its mouth is on this familiar genre.

Rather than being about the monster himself, or even one of his victims, the film centers around the man he didn’t kill—the man who escaped.

“Woman of the Hour,” which premiered Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival, is based on the 1970s crimes of Rodney Alcala, better known as the “Dating Game Killer.”

It has claimed the lives of at least eight women over a decade, but investigators believe the number could be as high as 130.

However, the most surreal chapter of Alcala’s life occurred when he appeared as a bachelor in a 1978 episode of The Dating Game right in the midst of committing these atrocities.

The question posed by Kendrick, making his directorial debut, and writer Ian Macdonald: Is the justice system so corrupt and society so indifferent to women that a prolific killer (who has already been arrested for assault) could easily end up in the game? show and win?

Kendrick pulls double duty and also plays “The Dating Game” contestant Cheryl Bradshaw, who chooses Alcala for a date at the end of the show.

Little is known about the real Cheryl, the director admitted, so she is largely a fictional creation meant to further the film’s theme.

She is introduced as a struggling actress who has just moved to Los Angeles and, in desperation, accepts a job on The Dating Game.

Fed up with the sexism on the show, not to mention in her own life, she turns the tables on the bachelors and starts asking them her own tough questions, like “What are women for?”

This feminist issue, like most game show scenes featuring Tony Hale as host, never happened.

The same goes for the story of Laura (Nicolette Robinson), a woman in the audience who is convinced Alcala killed her best friend and tries to blow the whistle during the recording.

Cheryl’s appearance is interspersed with flashbacks and flashbacks to some of Alcala’s murders in New York, Wyoming and California, where he used his day job as a photographer to intrude on women’s lives.

Daniel Zovatto plays him with just the right mix of creepiness and inscrutable charm, but cleverly avoids the tics and overacting that such roles can inspire.

In the director’s chair, Kendrick does not shy away from violence, although not excessive.

However, the murder scenes are hard to watch and made all the more real by the authentic 1970s grime that permeates these dangerous apartments, rest stops, bars and parking lots.

All the women are dedicated, but the best is Autumn Best as the young runaway who ends up driving with Alcala on a deserted highway.

The scene with the most tension is another imaginary one.

We know that Cheryl communicated with Rodney after this episode, and this conversation made her decide not to date him.

Kendrick and McDonald turn this tidbit into a paralyzing bar encounter that could turn fatal within seconds.

I was reminded of the drunken phone conversation between Richard Nixon and interviewer David Frost in the movie Frost/Nixon.

This too was the author’s invention, but it had to be there to tell the story.

The meeting between Rodney and Alcala is a necessary evil, not only to give the film its climax, but also to show how easy it is for evil to be inches from our faces. Or on our TV screen.