‘The Woman in Cabin 10’ Movie Review: A Serviceable British Potboiler At Sea
Photo from Netflix
From Jeremy Kibler
There is one woman who was never there (or was she?) and multiple windows in The Woman in Cabin 10 that you’d be forgiven for thinking this was in anyway connected to another Netflix book-to-film adaptation, The Woman in the Window…or even the streamer’s ridiculously self-aware series The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. More in the mode of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes on a train and the Jodie Foster-starring thriller Flightplan on a plane comes this paranoid whodunit on a yacht. Based on Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel, The Woman in Cabin 10 takes a bit to find its pulse, but as a conventionally engrossing mystery led by Keira Knightley that fills 92 minutes, there are worse ways to spend an evening.
Keira Knightley plays award-winning journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock, who’s coming hot off a hard-hitting piece that resulted in a female source being drowned to death. In need of a vacation but assigned to a lighter beat by her editor at The Guardian (an inscrutably underused Gugu Mbatha-Raw), it’s fortuitous that Lo then receives an invitation aboard a luxury yacht, the Aurora Borealis. Sailing to Norway for a charity gala, the excursion is hosted by terminally ill Norwegian shipping heiress Anne Bullmer (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and her husband, Richard (Guy Pearce), who plans to dedicate a cancer research foundation in his wife’s name. “It’s a human-interest piece for inhumane times,” Lo reasons.
Once aboard, the reporter finds her surrounded by her old flame, photographer Ben (David Ajala), who’s working the event, and a circle of billionaires, including a bleached-blonde partier (Daniel Ings); a vapid influencer (Kaya Scodelario); a biting gallerist (Hannah Waddingham) and her husband (David Morrissey); and a sober rock star (Christopher Rygh). In the middle of the night at sea, Lo wakes up to the sound of a struggle in the cabin next door—yes, very good, Cabin 10—and off her balcony sees a body in the water. Was someone thrown overboard? Once she alerts the crew, she’s told everyone is accounted for, Cabin 10 was never occupied, and the woman Lo describes never existed. Either Lo is crazy, or she’s being gaslit by every single passenger on board, but she will get to the bottom of it.
On the deepest level, The Woman in Cabin 10 could be about journalistic truth-seeking and giving a voice to the voiceless, but this is more of a serviceable potboiler. It’s also not really interested in skewering the wealthy with much class commentary à la Glass Onion, aside from every rich passenger being painted as aloof and self-centered when a murder has occurred. Again, a straightforward paperback thriller is fine every once in a while. As competently directed by Simon Stone (who co-wrote the script with Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse from Emma Frost’s adaptation of the novel), the film is never edge-of-your-seat stuff, but it certainly gets some tension out of Lo having more than one brush with danger while piecing together what the bloody hell is going on.
Knightley fights hard to keep Lo Blacklock interesting enough by having a diligent work ethic with a dose of PTSD and a supposedly checkered romantic past. She refuses to be passive, even when others attempt to silence her. The wildly overqualified ensemble is too underserved for one’s liking, but there are flashes of these actors having a ton of fun (particularly Hannah Waddingham), standing as red herrings and gaslighting poor Keira Knightley. It’s clearly by design that they’re all one-note bores. One key casting choice makes the whodunit not particularly surprising, but it’s more about the particulars of that whodunit (the whydunit?).
Once our heroic journo starts investigating the seemingly bottomless bowels of the spectacularly sleek yacht, the mystery of it all keeps you on your toes. Not everything in the plot holds scrutiny, but as a beach read in movie form, The Woman in Cabin 10 serves well enough as an entertaining, satisfying voyage.
Rating: 3/5
The Woman in Cabin 10 is currently available to stream on Netflix.
