Is Netflix’s #1 New Movie, ‘Woman Of The Hour,’ Worth Watching?

Netflix has a new movie that has debuted immediately in the #1 slot on the service, Woman of the Hour, and given that Netflix has no actual rating system for you to check if something may be good or not, you can find out here.

Netflix is full of big hits and big misses when it comes to its original movie offerings, and honestly, this year has been pretty excellent between heavy hitters like Hit Man and Rebel Ridge (congrats on Green Lantern Aaron Pierre!). Now, the same is true for Woman of the Hour, it seems.

Currently, Woman of the Hour has an excellent 90% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes with a full 123 reviews in, about 20 times how many this new season of The Lincoln Lawyer has, for whatever reason. It has a less-amazing-but-still-okay 69% audience score. Here’s what it’s about:

“An aspiring actress crosses paths with a prolific serial killer in '70s LA when they're cast on an episode of The Dating Game. Based on a true story.”

It’s a wild story, but one remarkable aspect of it is that Woman of the Hour is actually the directorial debut of none other than Anna Kendrick of Pitch Perfect fame (and many other things!). I had not seen her in very much for a while now, and I wondered what she was up to and it turns out…learning to be a great director. She also stars in the film, and it’s one hell of a first movie. Here’s what some of the critics are saying about it:

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• Rolling Stone: “Woman of the Hour is a lot of things. But what this unsettling, undeniably compelling look back at an odd collision of psychopathy and pop culture is getting at beneath its paisley-patterned decor goes beyond just one mass murderer.”
• RogerEbert.com: “Before the violence becomes scintillating or exploitative, she abruptly cuts away, making sure the viewer is aware of their own voyeurism, which she has the power to deny.”
• San Jose Mercury News: “It’s that detail and a focus on how sexism and laziness factored into why Rodney wasn’t stopped that distinguish Woman of the Hour and make it better than recent true crime stories.”

And here’s one of those 10% negative reviews, for balance:

• Mashable: “"What are girls for?" Cheryl playfully asks her bachelors, who mostly flub their replies. Kendrick's film fares no better answering that query.”

All in all, it seems like yes, Woman of the Hour is a great True Crime entry that adapts a true story outside of the docu-series format, and a great debut for Anna Kendrick as a director. Looking forward to seeing what she does next after this.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.