THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 - Mark Reviews Movies

The Woman in Cabin 10, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 10, 2025

The setup to the plot of The Woman in Cabin 10 is admittedly intriguing. This is essentially a murder mystery and the puzzle of a disappearing person, set on a luxury yacht traversing across the sea and occupied by an assortment of wealthy, suspicious people. Once it becomes clear that co-writer/director Simon Stone's movie is only interested in plot, however, the whole affair just feels like a lot of waiting for our main character to piece together everything.

Mysteries require a bit more than that to be engaging, even if this one's central riddle does lead to some genuine surprises, as ridiculous as they may be and as contrived as the process of revealing them may become. The screenplay, based on a novel by Ruth Ware (as well as an adaptation by Emma Frost), deserves at least a little bit of credit for cleverly distracting us from what is right in front of our faces pretty early into the story.

That story revolves around Laura Blacklock (Keira Knightley), an intrepid journalist whose characterization begins and ends with that description. It's either very bad luck or something else entirely for the people behind the assorted crimes that take place that someone as determined to get at the truth is aboard this boat, and in retrospect, the only reason Laura is there does seem to be so that the story does have a detective of sorts to sort out all of the clues. To explain why it makes little to no sense as to why she'd be invited in the first place might be to give away too much.

The fact that this only arises after the fact of the movie, though, does say something about how the plotting of Stone, Joe Shrapnel, and Anna Waterhouse's screenplay is assembled. Laura, who needs a bit of a break from hard-hitting journalism after one of the contacts on her last story was murdered, receives an invite for the maiden voyage of this yacht. It will travel from England to Norway, carrying the board members of a charitable foundation that was established after the affluent Annie (Lisa Loven Kongsli) was diagnosed with leukemia.

The ship was commissioned by Annie's husband Richard (Guy Pearce) in the hopes that they'd be able to use it after her recovery, but Annie has recently decided to stop any and all treatment for the disease. This voyage, then, might be Annie's last, but Richard and the rest of the board hope the publicity will bring more money into the foundation.

Anyway, here's the point at which we're introduced to all the future suspects of whatever will happen on the yacht, and it's quite disappointing to realize that each and every character aboard the vessel primarily exists to serve that role. Indeed, most of those characters—including ones played by Hannah Waddingham and David Morrissey, as a married couple whose relationship is a mess, as well as Daniel Ings, as a sexist tech mogul, and Paul Kaye, playing a washed-up rock star—mainly stand around the backdrop, looking quite suspicious in a vague way.

Meanwhile, the title refers to a woman (played by Gitte Witt) in the eponymous sleeping quarters of the yacht. Laura discovers her while trying to avoid her ex-boyfriend and photographer Ben (David Ajala), who also has coincidentally been invited to take photos of the trip and the fundraiser at port. If his presence seems like bad luck for our protagonist, just wait until the screenplay reveals the real and only reason he's onboard the yacht—a complete coincidence that pushes credulity even in the moment it happens.

One night, Laura hears a scuffle and some arguing in the cabin next door, before the sound of a splash of a body hitting the water. When she alerts the crew as to what she heard and saw, a head count is performed, and everyone who was on the boat when it set off is still aboard. In fact, the cabin where Laura saw the woman is officially empty on ship's manifest, and no one has seen or has any idea about the woman the journalist encountered.

In terms of a mystery, this is theoretically cracking stuff, so why does it play in such a flat manner? The absence of any genuine personalities aboard the yacht surely has something to do with that, since the characters do exist either to behave strangely around Laura or to help her in some way, such as how Ben accidentally does and how social media influencer Grace (Kaya Scodelario) confirms that all of these obviously suspicious folks are worthy of, well, suspicion. As solid as Knightley is in the role of the determined and increasingly paranoid amateur detective, there's little more than that to the character, who spends the entirety of the movie following assorted hints, evading someone or some people who are out to kill her, and having the puzzle pieced together for her at various points.

Sure, at least one twist is a surprise here, but The Woman in Cabin 10 needs more than that and a nifty setup to really succeed. Without anything beyond the plot to care about, it's just going through the motions.

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