My appreciation for smaller, simpler films is growing. And that has left me seeking out a good mystery, a whodunnit or otherwise. The Woman in Cabin 10, Netflix’s latest Original Film starring Kiera Knightley, is giving me exactly what I have been looking for.
Directed by Simon Stone, The Woman in Cabin 10 is written by Stone, Joe Shrapnel, and Anna Waterhouse, who adapted the story for the screen with Emma Frost, based on the book of the same name by Ruth Ware. In the film, audiences follow Laura Blacklock (Keira Knightley), who goes by Lo, a journalist on a luxury superyacht named the Aurora Borealis for a travel assignment.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
The superyacht belongs to a millionaire philanthropist, Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce), and Lo is there for a fluff piece, after suffering one of the lowest points in her life when an interview subject was murdered. She’s struggling with grief and guilt, and what better way to fix it than to do something easy?
A group of millionaires on a superyacht? What could go wrong?
Lo is supposed to schmooze with other wealthy individuals and take notes from any speeches. She’s just there for a bit of fun. It should be easy. But while she is a fish out of water, she recognizes her old flame and colleague Ben Morgan (David Ajala). He’s attractive, cocky, and a great photographer picked to chronicle the yacht’s voyage.
Like many ex-lovers, Lo attempts to avoid him, only to wind up seeking peace in the titular Cabin 10. Only, there is a woman in cabin 10. Bullmer’s wife, Anne, is bald and sickly but ultimately in good spirits. The two hit it off immediately. Anne brings Lo to a library, where they laugh and talk, and ultimately, Lo discovers that the goal of the gala they’re all heading to will be for Anne to give away her money. Her fluff piece just got even better.
But after a night of heavy drinking, Lo hears a scream and sees a woman fall overboard with only a bloody handprint left behind. But when Lo starts to tell the people around her, they do nothing but gaslight her. This is where The Woman in Cabin 10 starts to stick out. The propensity for all of the people who once got along with and even joked with Lo quickly began to turn on her. To them, Lo is paranoid and unwell. And, she dreamed it all up.
The gaslighting is strong in The Woman in Cabin 10, and that makes for a good mystery.
The one that sticks out the most is Anne. Having just had a wonderful experience with the millionaire’s wife, Lo took a back when Anne gave her the cold shoulder. And that’s when the plot thickens. While the audience and Lo know the truth, the yacht’s manifest shows that no one is missing. Despite not being believed by anyone onboard, she continues to look for answers, trying to overturn every stone she finds and having her life threatened in the process.
The Woman in Cabin 10 is mostly a one-location film, primarily thriving on the tension driven by being in a space that should seemingly be impossible to hide secrets in. By that same token, you would think that Lo would be relatively safe. But as she gets closer to discovering the truth, the danger just keeps growing. In one sequence, Lo is pushed into a tank, risking drowning, and is only saved by the fact that guests saw her through the fish tank wall.
Much of The Woman in Cabin 10 unfolds as you would expect, but it does so well. The pacing and twisting of the narrative work well enough together, and Lo is the heroine to root for. With Ben helping her eventually, it’s easy to root for them. As the pieces of the story begin to fall in place, the danger just keeps increasing, so much so that Lo begins to hide like a stowaway.
As the tension ramps up, so does the level of absurdity played with a straight face.
With a high-octane third act, The Woman in Cabin 10 puts the pedal to the floor and doesn’t ease off until the conflict is resolved. While the film may feel like a subtly different movie in the first act and third act, it uses tension as its guide to track those differences. Still, as the danger grows, the film veers too much into absurdity, played straight, and could have benefited from a touch of camp or humor to ground it.
That said, the performances in The Woman in Cabin 10 are what ultimately bring the ship home. Knightley and Ajala, as Lo and Ben, have stellar chemistry, matching each other’s energy perfectly. To round ou tthe performances, Guy Pearce, and the rest of the rich people on board, which include Grace (Kayla Scodelario), Heidi (Hannah Waddingham), and her husband Thomas (David Morrissey), Adam (Daniel Ings), Sirgid (Amanda Collin), who serves as the yacht’s security, and the titular woman in cabin 10 (Gitte Witt).
While the humor that we find in the first part of the film could have resurfaced toward its end, Lo’s immediate dedication to the truth and how Knightley plays her is what keeps you engaged even when certain elements begin to derail. The guilt that Lo carries continuously resurfaces, working to both push her to keep moving at times and clip her wings at other times.
The Woman in Cabin 10 is worth watching, and it’s all thanks to Kiera Knightley’s performance.
With flashbacks occurring frequently, Lo’s guilt also serves as a narrative device to prompt the audience to question her. Sure, we saw what she did. We’re fairly certain someone was thrown overboard, but if no one else notices or cares, did we? Lo’s flashbacks and anxiety serve to build distrust within the audience and contribute to the tension of the mystery. But our heroine is never engulfed by it, vulnerable for sure, but never weak. Her tenacity is a force that Keira Knightley deeply understands how to play.
The Woman in Cabin 10 has a straight-to-streaming (or DVD back in the day) quality that I find myself appreciating more and more. As a thriller and a mystery, the film hits all the right marks, even if it is just coloring by numbers. Still, the charm it has within its genre and Keira Knightley’s ability to keep you enamored are what make this a great watch for the weekend.
The Woman in Cabin 10 is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.
