Watched: 11/07/2025
Format: Netflix
Viewing: First
Director: Simon Stone
It's Noirvember, so I need to keep fitting in noir, neo or otherwise. I also had foot surgery yesterday, so I am couch-bound and taking drugs. So maybe all of my choices are not great in the moment. I vaguely remember putting on like 4 Hallmark movies yesterday as I rode out a hydrocodone adventure.
Anyhoo... I was pretty excited back when I heard Hannah Waddingham was going to be in an ensemble locked-room-murder-mystery. She seems kind of perfect for being a little extra in a Murder on the Orient Express sort of movie. And I like Keira Knightley well enough. And I've been pulling for Guy Pearce since Memento.
I was even planning to make time for this movie the weekend it dropped on Netflix. And then the reviews hit. Not great.
And having had watched this movie, I am not surprised by this.
First: all the acting is fine to good. You cannot blame Ms. Knightley, Mr. Pearce or Hannah Waddingham (especially not Ms. Waddingham).
The directing is... fine? The script is awful. The cinematography is beyond dreadful. Who even knows about the editing...
It's a movie about a reporter (Knightley) who is coming off of a rough story where her informant was killed for giving her information. Does this have any story impact? No! It could have. It suggests it does. But it doesn't.
She's given a chance to cover a luxury cruise on a yacht owned by a billionaire carting his billionaire friends across the North Sea (the worst waters in the Northern Hemisphere, but does that come into play? No!). The billionaire (Guy Pearce) is looking to start a foundation in his wife's name as she is soon to pass, now dealing with Stage 4 cancer. She is, of course, on the cruise with her personal doctor.
They barely introduce the passengers coming aboard - and this is highly unusual as anyone who has seen a Knives Out movie, The Last of Sheila or a Poirot mystery will tell you. Nor are any of these characters developed.
Hannah Waddingham is given a few lines here and there, but she's mostly used the way you use a fun dog in a movie. When they don't know what else to cut to, they cut to her having a reaction.
Knightley finds her ex-boyfriend is on the cruise as a photographer (David Ajala) and is so alarmed she dashes into a cabin not-her-own to hide from him (sigh). Here she stumbles across the mysterious woman in Cabin 10.
That night she hears a disturbance in Cabin 10 and then sees someone in the water. But there never was anyone booked into Cabin 10! Is she craaaaaazy? Well, no. She's our protagonist and this movie isn't that interesting. But because the movie doesn't care to develop anything about the passengers or give them motives for killing anyone and hiding it, we kind of have to assume it has to do with Guy Pearce and his wife, and we know billions are at stake.
Then the movie tells you what is happening with like 45 minutes to go and..... yeah. It's super lame.
The movie kind of makes you think, because they keep cutting to Waddingham as the only warm color in the movie, that she'll do something at the end, and instead they pull a character out of the background who suddenly becomes important.
At some point, someone clearly tries to murder our hero in front of everyone, and they're still calling her paranoid. Like... make it make sense. And the last five minutes is so unbelievably stupid, I can't believe no one on cast or crew stopped the proceedings to say "no one would do this. This doesn't make a lick of sense."
I didn't hate this movie, but it's just not good. It's not even entertaining. It just kind of keeps happening. It's poorly shot, mistaking every shot being underlit for mood. And ignoring every opportunity to do or say something that would have been interesting - like the fact our hero is middle-class and they set up the class differences like something that might matter, but I assure you, it doesn't matter.
It is also the second thing I've watched produced in 2025 that was clearly run through ChatGPT to ensure the dialog was as flat and obvious as possible for people scrolling while the media plays (the other being the pilot of All's Fair on Hulu). And I almost want to raise a flag if this *isn't* the product of AI and algorithms, because it would suggest writers are receiving blows to the head and still being forced to work.
But, yes, Waddingham looks smashing throughout. 5 stars for her wardrobe alone.
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