By Sky Pinkett
Staff Writer
For thriller and Ruth Ware fans alike, the movie adaptation to the author’s 2016 novel “The Woman in Cabin 10” recently premiered on Netflix on Oct. 10.
The movie had all the advantages with a gripping premise and a talented cast. English actress Kiera Knightley, whose recent foray into action thrillers has been just as exciting as her period pieces, plays a journalist who was invited onto a private yacht where she witnesses a murder. The problem? The person she saw get killed apparently doesn’t exist.
What follows is a story of gaslighting and a classic ensemble of suspects. Think of “Murder on the Orient Express,” but the murder happens on a yacht and Hercule Poirot is nowhere to be found.
Knightley’s acting as a dedicated but tired journalist much in need of a break doesn’t disappoint. Neither do the performances from her costars such as Hannah Waddingham and Guy Pearce. While their characters aren’t the most interesting, they did the best with what they were given.
English actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw also made an appearance, but her showing up for only five minutes of the entire film should have been the first red flag.
The film starts out with the necessary exposition needed to establish the journalist, our rich yacht-goers, and the crumbs that may or may not be relevant to the inevitable twist at the end. The viewer is given hints to the journalist’s past that may indicate her having post-traumatic stress disorder, a detail that is crucial to dissecting whether she is actually being gaslit or is suffering from delusions.
Personally, I am not the biggest fan of thrillers that try to pull the “It’s all in their head” shtick. However, “The Woman in Cabin 10” strongly introduced Knightley’s character as intelligent and level-headed while also balancing her very real traumas from the journalism field.
Regrettably, those are all the good things I have to say about the film. I have never read Ware’s book this was adapted from, so I am unsure of who to blame for the vanilla writing.
All the elements of the story were introduced so well only to let them dissolve into uninteresting, and sometimes pointless, plot points. The worst crime a mystery movie can commit is having a twist that the viewer had no chance of being able to guess with what was introduced. This movie commits that crime.
The biggest problem was the pacing, which is half of what a good thriller relies on. Everything ran at a steady pace until the plot decided to move as slow as the yacht along the ocean. Like a certain somebody in this film, I wish I had jumped off the boat along with them and swam away from this dull yacht and its characters.
This movie is far from the worst thing I have ever seen. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a bad movie. It’s just terribly basic. It had the choice between being a well-written murder mystery like “Knives Out,” or a horribly written but delightfully entertaining thriller like “Obsessed.” It chose neither.
