That dissonance is completely over Woman of the Hour: a serial killer who wins a dating game show, a date with death. Ahead, we dive into how the film concludes the stories of aspiring actor Sheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick) and Rodney Alcala – and what happened next in the characters’ real lives.

Who does Rodney Alcala star in? Woman of the Hour?

It may seem too strange to be true, but the film’s depiction of Alcala and Bradshaw’s first meeting as participants in The dating game is based on reality. Yes, a serial killer really appeared on the game show in the 1970s, amid a series of brutal murders, and won. The real Alcala had already killed at least three women before appearing on the show, and he killed at least two more after his episode — as the film notes, some estimate the number of his victims as high as 130.

For the filmmakers, Alcala was a starting point for exploring a larger cultural story. “He wasn’t the thing that interested me,” screenwriter Ian McDonald tells Tudum. “I found the context around him really interesting. He seemed to represent something we were struggling with as a country at the time, which was regular people looking the other way so bad people can get away with bad behavior.

The film shows this tragedy in slow motion. In one subplot, Laura (Nicolette Robinson), a friend of one of Alcala’s victims, recognizes him The dating game. It is a moment fictionalized for the film that reflects the many examples of ordinary people looking the other way. “Laura actually functions as a kind of representation of all the people who tried to raise the alarm and were ignored,” says Kendrick. “There are so many heroes in this story, but the heroes were outnumbered and outnumbered by incompetence and negligence and a culture that did not prioritize victims.”

McDonald agrees. “Rodney Alcala really seems to have ignored a lot of his worst tendencies,” he says. “And so it wasn’t that he was being sneaky, but that other people were… actively looking the other way.”

When Woman of the Hour take place?

The film jumps around in time to follow several of Alcala’s crimes:

1977: Woman of the Hour begins with Alcala’s murder of a pregnant young woman in Wyoming after photographing her.

1978: The film jumps forward to Sheryl Bradshaw’s life in Hollywood, and to the year of her close encounter with Alcala during his 1978 performance at The dating game. It is the narrative center of the story and a sequence to which the film returns again and again.

1979: The story continues after Alcala’s Dating game appearance, when he picks up teenage runaway Amy in San Gabriel, California. This is another subplot that the film returns to throughout.

1978: Back to The dating gameas Sheryl prepares for her performance.

1971: Jump back to Alcala’s time in New York City, where he kills a young woman after helping her move.

1978: The dating game begins with Sheryl and her three suitors. Laura sits in the audience.

1977: A flashback to 1977. During my work at the Los Angeles TimesAlcala is questioned by the police in connection with the crimes of another serial killer.

1978: Back on The dating game, Laura recognizes Alcala as the man who was last seen with a murdered friend of hers. She tries to warn production. Meanwhile, Alcala wins the date with Sheryl.

1979: Alcala and Amy continue their ride and he reveals his true nature.

1978: Alcala and Sheryl have an awkward date, and he threatens her in the parking lot. Only the intrusion of a few potential witnesses stops Alcala from killing her. Laura makes up with her boyfriend and reports Alcala’s TV appearance to the police; Sheryl moves home.

1979: In the aftermath of Alcala’s attack, Amy sees her chance to escape. When Alcala stops for gas, she manages to reach a nearby restaurant and call the police.

The period setting required McDonald and Kendrick to reconstruct Alcala’s Dating game appearance for today’s viewers. “He’s charming by 1978 standards, but in 2024 audiences would look at that and say, ‘He’s a serial killer,’” McDonald says. “We wanted to make sure that modern audiences would experience basically the same kind of emotional journey as Sheryl, so we fictionalized his dialogue to tie it a little more to modern sensibilities.”

Sheryl also got a little update, inspired by another episode of The dating game. “I saw one … where a woman was asking questions that were clearly combative,” McDonald says. “She tried to pick a fight with the host, saw the show as sexist, and she really disapproved of it, and she made that disapproval known through the questions she asked.” McDonald translated the bachelor style to Sheryl’s character: fictionalization with a grain of truth.

How does Rodney Alcala get caught? Woman of the Hour?

Alcala is undone by Amy (Best), the runaway he picks up in San Gabriel. After driving her into the middle of the desert, he attacks her and, in a perverse moment of self-pity, bursts into tears. “The story where the young drifter wakes up after being attacked, and she looks at him, and he’s crying—there’s a way I still don’t quite know what to make of that,” McDonald says. “I don’t think these kinds of people are really capable of empathy. So I don’t think that’s it. I think on some level it’s probably more shame or embarrassment.

Whatever motivated Alcala’s tears, it gives Amy a chance to escape. She flips the script on her would-be killer and begs him not to tell anyone about what happened, which somehow convinces him to spare her. Then, as soon as they pull into a gas station, she runs for help.

Deep in the desert, Alcala is finally arrested. It’s a landscape that Kendrick returns to several times in the film, especially in her depictions of the murders. “It felt important to me to connect these women to nature for several reasons, but one of them was that I wanted to put them in places that spoke to the vastness of their lives beyond this moment,” she says. “It’s a 90-minute film. There is only so much screen time anyone can have. And I wanted – despite the way we meet them – for their environment to reflect the beauty and the fullness of their whole life before and what they should have had after.”

What happens to Sheryl in Woman of the Hour?

Sheryl, played by Kendrick, lives after a date with Alcala, narrowly avoiding his violent nature. It’s a small victory for women amid his crime spree. After appearing on The dating gameSheryl decides she’s not cut out for Hollywood and moves home, but not before standing up for herself one more time, along with her pushy neighbor (Pete Holmes).

“Ian and I were discussing whether there might be a little bit of dialogue or conversation between Sheryl and her neighbor at the end of the movie, and nothing felt right,” Kendrick recalls. “And Ian suddenly suggested, ‘Well, what if Sheryl just stands her ground in the hallway, and he has to move around her?’ I think I threw my highlighter across the room – I was so excited.”

It is a moment that determines the final act of Woman of the Hour. McDonald “has a great way of illustrating the complexity of a victory that is small, but meaningful to that character,” Kendrick says. Amy and Sheryl will continue despite all the pain they have experienced.

Woman of the Hour is now streaming on Netflix.

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