Simon Stone’s The Woman in Cabin 10 is a locked-room mystery in which Laura (Keira Knightley), an investigative reporter for The Guardian, is invited by mysterious billionaire couple Richard (Guy Pearce) and Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli) onto their luxury yacht. The cruise to Norway, doubling as self-regarding announcement of a massive philanthropic venture and a last big party for the deathly ill Anne, has barely begun when Laura sees a woman fall overboard. Told everybody on the yacht is accounted for, Laura at first thinks that she’s being gaslit. Later, after an unseen person shoves her into a pool where she almost drowns, Laura starts to believe that she’s the next to be murdered.
At first, it seems as if this adaptation of Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel will be making at least a light meal out of the one-percenters gathered on the yacht. These include a blowsy gallery owner (Hannah Waddingham), a bleached-blond snob (Daniel Ings), and Laura’s photographer ex-boyfriend (David Ajala), mostly portrayed as an arrogant and sneery bunch ready to be taken down a peg by an intrepid reporter. The gathered guests have the kind of smugness that would make a good fit for a murder mystery set in Cape Cod and starring Nicole Kidman.
But the film avoids Triangle of Sadness-like satire, A Murder at the End of the World-esque politically charged commentary, and Agatha Christie-style thumbnail portraits of the possible villains. Instead, the film sticks to a mercifully fast-moving plot in which Laura tries to convince people the woman in cabin 10 existed while also puzzling out who wants to kill her and why. The suggestion that Laura may in fact be an unreliable narrator (shades of Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train) generates some uncertainty about whether she’s in actual danger.
But rather than getting into complexities of perspective, Stone plays it straight down the middle, much like he did with his formulaic yet highly watchable The Dig. A villain is identified in relatively short order and then it’s up to Laura—who, during the first part of the film, has been acting more like an easily rattled ninny rather than a seasoned journalist—to unmask them without ending up dead or packed off to an institution. Though the plot generates a few thrills and the luxe surroundings are attractive, it occasionally gins up some over-the-top moments that can be ludicrous—a mortally wounded character has time and the wherewithal to rasp, “Get the truth out,” to Laura before expiring—but at least deliver a jolt.
Handsomely shot, The Woman in Cabin 10 keeps things moving at a good clip but also jumps to its climax too rapidly. Many scenes on the yacht feel truncated, which drains the conclusion of its impact and also limits the development of any secondary characters who might have brought more pizzazz to this neatly done but too easily resolved mystery.
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