A Woman at Play: Ride with a Serial Killer (review)

A Woman at Play: Ride with a Serial Killer (review)

A serial killer in the middle of a wave of murders takes part in the Tournez merège! American. An incredible true story adapted by Anna Kendrick.

Los Angeles, late 1970s. While a wave of unsolved murders of women terrorize California, an aspiring actress reluctantly agrees to participate in the show The Dating Gameadapted here under the name Turn Carousel! What no one knows is that one of the three candidates who try to seduce her turns out to be a serial killer… A pitch that is inevitably irresistible, especially since the story is true: the serial killer Rodney Alcala, who has claimed victims from LA to New York, did appear on the marital game show (the footage is on YouTube, if you’re interested). But this is actually only a very small part ofA woman at stakeAnna Kendrick’s first directorial debut and a double-trigger film. Side A: the bloody part about a psychopath who somehow escapes from the police. Side B: the portrait of toxic masculinity on a country scale. Another charge against the patriarchy?

Yes, but it’s above all more clever and fun than that. At the cost of some excess of zeal and big liberties taken with reality, Kendrick maintains a half-disturbing, half-satirical tone. And manages to tell, through the murderous journey of Alcala (the astonishing Daniel Zovatto, disturbing false air of Xavier Dolan), how each man hides a potential monster or misogynistic scum. Paranoid sets in, masks fall, blood flows and every woman is potential prey. In this world, their survival depends only on instinct.

A Woman at Play, available on Netflix.

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