The Woman in Cabin 10 Review: Keira Knightley’s Nautical Thriller Drowns in Mediocrity

It’s a horrible thing to be doubted when you’re certain of the truth. That’s what happens to Laura Blacklock in Keira Knightley’s new thriller when she watches someone die aboard a luxury yacht. No one believes her when she reports the murder, even though she’s a journalist. In fact, no one believes that the victim ever existed at all. 

Thankfully, this journalist will probably have a far easier time convincing you just how boring The Woman in Cabin 10 actually is.

Netflix doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to their original movie slate, especially in the action/thriller genre. With duds like Red Notice, Back In Action, and The Gray Man taking up a big chunk of the streamer’s top ten most-watched films of all time, my expectations for new movies like this are sinking faster than… Laura’s stomach watching that poor passenger drown.

It doesn’t help that co-writers Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse are most famous for penning Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, or that the film is directed by Simon Stone, a former stage director who helmed Carey Mulligan’s so-so biopic The Dig in 2021. Still, I’ve always rooted for Keira Knightley, and with the success of last year’s Black Doves — not to mention the phenomenal cast she’s joined by here — there was always a chance that The Woman in Cabin 10 might turn out better than expected.

Unfortunately, my optimism was as delusional as the boat’s gaslighting crew makes Laura out to be. 

Based on Ruth Ware’s bestselling novel, The Woman in Cabin 10 starts off intriguingly enough with a faithful take on the book’s central mystery. Namely, who was thrown overboard, and why kill someone out at sea when you can’t escape? Unless it turns out no one was really murdered at all… 

After Blacklock reports seeing a passenger thrown overboard, the crew do a head count and claim that no one is missing. It seems that Laura must have imagined it all, including a bloody handprint she saw on the glass, which is missing now too. Only Laura’s ex-boyfriend, Ben, gives her the benefit of the doubt as she begins an investigation into what really happened.

There’s plenty of scope to mine tension from the film’s claustrophobic setting, evoking classic Hitchcockian suspense with a fresh spin on what it means to be a woman gaslit in the modern era. However, the only tension I ended up feeling was the urge to set the film to a faster speed or risk drowning in the mediocrity of it all. 

It’s not that the twists just play it safe, either. They certainly do to start with, telegraphing the idea that something more might be happening early on. But then the ship is steered from boring to unhinged with improbable turns that unmoor the film’s sense of reality. Never mind that dull Netflix sheen, which so many of their original films are characterized by. It’s the script itself that feels unreal, hurtling into a final stretch that’s nigh on nonsensical. 

Much of this comes down to how poorly the film’s biggest twist lands and how unlikely it is that the other characters didn’t know what was happening sooner. Saying more would spoil one of the script’s livelier moments. On the plus side, this big reveal arrives a lot earlier than you might expect, so things aren’t dragged out further.

To be fair to the writers, this twist is integral to the source material, so it’s not like they could have scrapped it without drastically changing the core of this story. And without having read the book myself, I imagine that the reveal probably works far better on page than screen because our imagination does a lot of the heavy lifting.

Keira does a lot of heavy lifting too, centering the narrative with one of the film’s better performances. Still, there’s only so much you can do with such a soggy script. Guy Pearce and Hannah Waddingham also bring some star power aboard, but not half as much as you’d expect from either seasoned performer. 

Star Trek: Discovery’s David Ajala is one of the film’s few standouts, sparring with Knightley’s journalist in the role of her charming ex. Whenever they’re on screen together, The Woman in Cabin 10 comes dangerously close to feeling like a film made by actual people. You know, instead of an AI algorithm that’s halfway through plundering the summertime beach read at your nearest airport bookshop.

But then talented stars like Kaya Scodelario and Gugu Mbatha-Raw show up in thankless nothing roles and suddenly, we’re reminded again that this is an original Netflix thriller. Mbatha-Raw, especially, is burdened with one of the worst lines committed to film in recent memory.