A terrifying serial killer story

Hollywood loves nothing more than a true-crime story about a serial killer, but a new movie directed by Anna Kendrick does a number on that familiar genre. 

Rather than being about the monster himself, or even one of his victims, the film is centered around a person he did not murder — someone who got away.

“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.

Over a decade, he took the lives of at least eight women, but investigators believe the number could be as high as 130.

Alcala’s most surreal chapter, however, was when he appeared as a bachelor on a 1978 episode of “The Dating Game” smack dab in the middle of committing these atrocities. 

The question posed by Kendrick, making a strong directing debut, and writer Ian McDonald: Is the justice system so screwed up and society so unconcerned with women that a prolific murderer (who had already been arrested for assault) could easily wind up on a game show — and win?

Kendrick does double duty, also playing “Dating Game” contestant Cheryl Bradshaw, who picked Alcala for a date at the end of the show.

Little is known about the real Cheryl, the director has admitted, so she is a mostly fictionalized creation to further the film’s talking points. 

She’s envisioned as a struggling actress who’s just moved to LA and takes a job on “The Dating Game” out of desperation.

Fed up with the show’s sexism, not to mention that of her own life, she turns the tables on the bachelors and begins asking them her own challenging questions such as “What are women for?”. 

That feminist query — like most of the game show scenes featuring Tony Hale as the host — never happened.

Same goes for the story of Laura (Nicolette Robinson), a woman in the audience who is certain that Alcala killed her best friend and attempts to blow the whistle during the taping. 

Cheryl’s appearance is interspersed with flashbacks and flash-forwards to some of Alcala’s killings in New York, Wyoming and California, as he used his day job as a photographer to intrude into women’s lives.

Daniel Zovatto plays him with the right mix of creepiness and incomprehensible allure, but shrewdly avoids the tics and overacting that such roles can inspire. 

In the director’s chair, Kendrick doesn’t shy away from violence, though it’s not excessive either.

Still, the murder scenes are difficult to watch and are made all the more real by an authentic 1970s grime that pervades these perilous apartments, rest stops, bars and parking lots.

The women are all committed, but best is Autumn Best as a young runaway who ends up driving with Alcala along a desert highway.

The scene most alive with tension is another imagined one.

We know that Cheryl interacted with Rodney after the episode and the conversation made her decide against going on a date with him.

Kendrick and McDonald turn that tidbit into a paralyzing encounter at a bar that comes seconds away from being fatal.

I was reminded of the drunken phone call between Richard Nixon and interviewer David Frost in “Frost/Nixon.”

That was also an invention of its writer, but it had to be there to tell the story. 

Rodney and Alcala’s meet-up is a necessary evil, not only to give the movie a climax, but to express how easy it is for evil to be inches from our face. Or on our TV screen.