The label “gaslighting” is invoked with some frequency in modern reviews, and The Woman in Cabin 10 both invokes and dilutes that legacy. It doesn’t fully mirror the slow, corrosive cruelty of 1944’s Gaslight, nor is it merely a catalogue of petty lies. Instead, it sits between those poles: a thriller that leans on the old-school paranoia of films like Flightplan and Breakdown — where the hunt for a missing person is complicated by everyone insisting the person never existed at all — but never quite reaches the taut subtlety those films aim for.
Keira Knightley plays Laura Blacklock, a sharp but overworked journalist at The Guardian who accepts an invitation to cover a lavish fundraiser aboard a billionaire’s yacht. The film telegraphs class tension early — Laura’s jeans and stubborn refusal to conform to yacht etiquette mark her as an outsider among the gilded guests — and the production leans into that eat-the-rich undercurrent without ever making it feel urgent or novel.
Once aboard, Laura encounters an array of personalities: influencer Grace (Kaya Scodelario), rocker Danny (Paul Kaye), curator Heidi (Hannah Waddingham), and her ex, photographer Ben (David Ajala). A mysterious blonde in the adjacent cabin appears to be the catalyst for the plot’s central mystery. One night Laura hears a scuffle, a scream and a splash — she’s convinced someone has gone overboard. But the more she insists, the more the other passengers treat her certainty as delusion: Cabin 10 was empty, they say, and no one remembers the woman she describes.
The premise is well-suited to a closed-room (or rather, closed-deck) mystery: trapped characters, claustrophobic corridors and the inevitability of suspicion among a small group. But where a locked-room story benefits from a protagonist whose resourcefulness anchors the investigation, Laura too often behaves recklessly instead of cleverly. Knightley brings the necessary tension to the role — she’s most compelling when tightly wound — but the script undercuts her credibility by turning persistence into imprudence rather than calculated sleuthing.
Director Simon Stone favors mood over mechanics, painting the yacht with green-tinged corridors and swooping stairwell shots that aim for disorientation. Those visual choices evoke Hitchcockian vertigo without ever committing to the sustained formal daring of, say, Brian De Palma. The supporting characters are mostly thin sketches; Kaya Scodelario is a notable exception, supplying a playful, sardonic energy that briefly livens the proceedings.
The film’s brisk runtime — roughly 85 minutes excluding credits — is a double-edged sword. It keeps the momentum moving but also truncates character work and investigative logic. The central twist reads well on paper but strains plausibility in execution, and the post-reveal set pieces (attempted murders, chases and physical confrontations) build energy without restoring the narrative cohesion that the setup promised.
Ultimately, The Woman in Cabin 10 becomes a pastiche of better thrillers rather than a distinct contribution to the genre. It borrows familiar motifs — class friction, unreliable perception, a confined setting — but rarely deepens them. What remains is a serviceable, occasionally stylish streaming mystery that overpromises and under-delivers; not quite gaslighting, not quite satisfying.
The Woman in Cabin 10 premieres on Netflix on October 10, 2025.
Source: Polygon
