The Woman in Cabin 10 review - Scandi noir meets Agatha Christie on a superyacht

A fizzy mystery cocktail with a twist and a splash, The Woman in Cabin 10, based on Ruth Ware’s bestseller, sails along like the sleek superyacht that provides its deadly setting.

A welcome blend of Scandinavian noir and Agatha Christie, this Netflix movie assembles a disparate cast of suspects led by a billionaire host (Guy Pearce, pictured below) and his cancer-stricken and even richer wife (Lisa Loven Kongsli). To promote their new cancer charity, the couple invites top donors, plus a rock star, influencers, and a random tech genius, aboard a three-day cruise across the North Sea.

Along for the ride, and in desperate need of a holiday, is investigative journalist Laura Blacklock (Keira Knightley, main picture), who’s still recovering from a traumatic tour of duty in the Middle East. She’s surprised to find her photographer ex-lover (David Ajala) in a nearby stateroom, but stunned when she awakens on the first night and catches a glimpse of someone falling overboard. But as in The Lady Vanishes, no one believes her. Laura’s protestations and suspicious nature soon make her persona non yacht-a – and the perhaps the next to go overboard.

Knightley’s in good form here, finding infinite ways to convey Laura’s fierce intelligence and vulnerability. She’s compelling even when the mystery becomes absurd.

Director Simon Stone (The Dig) steers the proceedings so briskly that supporting characters, including the all-too-obvious culprits, get scarcely any time to make an impression. (When Laura asks one fellow passenger how he knows the hosts, he replies, “I’m also rich", before disappearing for the rest of the movie.)

David Morrissey and Hannah Waddingham, as a pair of boozy toffs, seem to be having a high old time, and Kaya Scodelario, as a smarter-than-she-lets-on web celebrity, is slyly funny in her few scenes.

The film’s real star might be the sinuous interiors of the Norway-bound craft. Cinematographer Ben Davis tracks Knightley along spiral stairways and mirrored below-deck hallways that seem to curve into nowhere – a perfect vessel for paranoia.

The Woman in Cabin 10's central puzzle is solved too early, and the movie turns into a pedestrian thriller. However, author Ware has written several more Laura Blacklock mysteries, so the prospect of more Knightley and more scenes with Laura sparring with her editor (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is intriguing.

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