A no-nonsense thriller, based on Ruth Ware’s novel, The Woman in Cabin 10, is set on a luxury cruise ship and has a classic Hitchcockian plot about an innocent caught in a seemingly inescapable trap.
Simon Stone’s brisk direction goes straight to the point, after quickly establishing the credentials of investigative journalist Laura Blacklock (Keira Knightley) and her broken relationship with photographer Ben Morgan (David Ajala). After a particularly exhausting assignment, Laura accepts an invitation to travel aboard a yacht on the Norwegian fjords as a guest of billionaire Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce) for the launch of his charitable venture. She thinks the break will help with her emotionally fragile state at that point.
The other guests in the yacht are the wealthy donors to Bullmer’s cancer foundation that is meant to honour his dying wife Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli). The ship is all gleamingly opulent, and Laura is uneasy among the snooty fellow passengers; she is also disconcerted to see Ben there.
At night, asleep in her cabin, she is awoken by a disturbance in the cabin next to hers, and sees a woman’s body thrown overboard. The crew and guests insist that Cabin 10 was not occupied, though Laura had earlier caught a glimpse of a hooded woman inside.
Since no trace of this missing woman is found, everybody believes that Laura is delusional, and all the proof she manages to get disappears. An attempt to kill her is also scoffed at, till she manages to get hold of a strand of the mystery and tugs at it till it unravels.
In spite of being set mostly on the yacht, Laura’s suspicions and mounting tension are conveyed through the menacing surroundings and the disturbing music. Running at a concise 95 minutes, the pace prevents the attention from wandering, but it means little or no attention to character development. The others on the cruise – the kind of people who wield great power, so Ben warns Laura to be cautious—are reduced to sneering super rich stereotypes, who just lounge around drinking without sensing anything amiss.
Knightley brings a conviction to her character’s relentless pursuit of the truth, and has the fit physique to carry off all the running, climbing and tumbling scenes. This in spite of the genre clichés about gaslighting disturbed and “hysterical” women; had a man had voiced his fears about a possible murder he witnessed, would he be dismissed as easily?
Despite some changes from the novel, the film is a slick, competently made, watchable, and instantly forgettable thriller.
The Woman in Cabin 10
Directed by Simon Stone
Cast: Keira Knightley, Gary Pearce, David Ajala and others
On Netflix
