WOMAN OF THE HOUR

Actor Anna Kendrick, familiar from the Pitch Perfect series as a classic American sweetheart, here casts herself in a very different kind of role in her superbly controlled directorial debut. Based on the true crimes of serial killer Rodney Alcala, who in 1978 became a successful contestant on the television show The Dating Game, the taut narrative cuts between Alcala’s grisly doings and those of Sheryl Bradshaw, a struggling actor who goes on the show in the hope of boosting her career. Swirling through the game and its terrifying aftermath are questions that remain unhappily contemporary: about the morality of dating shows, about everyday threats of violence against women and about the fact that women who had encountered Alcala simply were not believed.