I went into “The Woman in Cabin 10” with high hopes. As usual with Netflix movies, however, I was ultimately let down.
“The Woman in Cabin 10” started with an intriguing story about a journalist, Lo, played by Keira Knightley, who was invited on a private yacht to celebrate the life of a wealthy businesswoman diagnosed with cancer. She takes on the story after insisting it would be a good break from the hard-cutting journalism she is used to.
It is clear from the beginning Lo does not belong on the luxury cruise ship she was invited to. She mistakenly wears her shoes on the boat, is underdressed for the welcoming ceremony, and overdressed for the dinner.
The other guests, mainly wealthy business owners and celebrities, criticize Lo for her mistakes, adding to her unwelcome feeling.
By now, I was getting invested in the story. The characters were introducing themselves, and an unsettling feeling was beginning to emerge. Of course, this is when Lo witnesses a woman being thrown overboard the ship.
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Despite being clear in what she saw and insisting she had spoken to this missing woman before, nobody else on board besides herself knew of this woman’s existence. The passengers and crew are all accounted for, and Lo is believed to be crazy.
The story really began to pick up here with all the investigating Lo was doing to unearth the truth. The reveal of who the missing woman actually was, and the perpetrators of the murder, was something I didn’t see coming.
However, after this climactic reveal, everything began to go downhill.
The immediate payoff of learning the truth didn’t go anywhere, as Lo found herself trapped inside a storage room for a considerable amount of screen time. When she finally escapes, Lo is attacked, which leads to the most useless death in this movie.
Another passenger on the ship, Ben, is a photographer and Lo’s ex. His story wasn’t developed very clearly throughout the film, and I couldn’t decide if I was supposed to dislike him or root for him and Lo to get back together. But when Lo is being attacked, Ben jumps in to save her and gets himself killed in her place.
This death just felt unnecessary for the scene. Ben’s character tried to be dynamic, but fell flat with no real execution. I couldn’t tell whether Lo was even that upset over his death, because she certainly didn’t act like it for long.
The rest of the film plays out fine, but it was very anticlimactic. The action wasn’t anything shocking, and the ending confused me.
The ending isn’t the only grudge I hold against this film, but the throwaway scene in the beginning is strange as well. The crew and fellow passengers make a big show of criticizing Lo for wearing her shoes on the boat at first, and the crew tells her that they can provide slippers or socks to wear alternatively.
For the rest of the film, nobody follows this rule. Ever. I’ve been on plenty of boats in my life to recognize if the shoes a person is wearing are bad for the boat’s floors, and the black bottomed dress shoes and heels each guest wears certainly fit the description. It’s a small detail, but I couldn’t get over the blatant disregard of a plot point.
Ultimately, the movie remains another average Netflix film. For only 90 minutes, it wasn’t a complete waste of my time, but certainly not something I would watch again.