The Woman in Cabin 10 (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 (2025)

Starring Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce, David Ajala, Art Malik, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings, Hannah Waddingham, David Morrissey, Gitte Witt, Christopher Rygh, Pippa Bennett-Warner, John Macmillan, Paul Kaye, Amanda Collin, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Charles Craddock, Ayò Owóyemi-Peters, Síofra Ní Éilí, Holly Godliman and Kasper Hilton-Hille.

Screenplay by Joe Shrapnel & Anna Waterhouse and Simon Stone.

Directed by Simon Stone.

Distributed by Netflix. 95 minutes. Rated R.

Several years ago, I was on a vacation trip down the shore and stopped into Cape Atlantic Book Company in Cape May to find something to read on the trip. While I was looking over the shelves, I overheard two women talking. One of them was telling her friend how much she had loved Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10 and the friend should read it. Honestly, I had never heard of Ware or the book, but I decided to look at the cover description when they moved on.

It sounded interesting, so on a whim I decided to take the woman’s advice – even though it was not leveled towards me and I didn’t know who the woman was or what her tastes were like. While it turned out to be not quite as great as the woman had said, the book was a very fun beach read. I’ve since become something of a fan of Ware’s work, having read several of her other novels.

Therefore, I found it interesting when I found that Netflix was making a film version of The Woman in Cabin 10 – the first movie based on the author’s work. (Other titles In the Dark Dark Wood, The Lying Game and Zero Days are all in development to become movies or TV series.)

However, I was a bit concerned, too. I love this type of breezy mystery novel, but often when they are brought to the big screen (or in this case, the small screen) many of the plot holes are more pronounced, and much of the story background is lost. For example, for every good adaptation, like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, there are several subpar ones like Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train and AJ Finn’s The Woman in the Window. (I’m trying to decide if it is just a coincidence that the four books I have just mentioned all have to word girl or woman in their titles.)

And it turns out, The Woman in Cabin 10 does not live up to the book (then again, what movie really does?), but it is mostly enjoyable in its own ways.

The Woman in Cabin 10 is sort of like a modern variation of an Agatha Christie novel, in which multiple people are stuck in a secluded place (in this case on a luxury yacht at sea) in which a murder may (or may not) have taken place.

Keira Knightley plays Laura “Lo” Blackwood, a London-based investigative journalist who is taking some time off after a devastating previous story in which her informant ended up being murdered. She takes a puff-piece story about a billionaire couple (Guy Pierce and Lisa Loven Kongsli) who are hosting a bunch of their rich friends on their mega-yacht to announce a new charity venture.

Of course, things don’t go as planned for Lo, and she quickly realizes this will not be the relaxing, luxurious job for which she was hoping. She mistakenly goes into the cabin next to hers on the yacht and briefly speaks to the blonde woman in the cabin. That night, she hears some fighting in the next room. She goes out onto the balcony just in time to see what she believes was the blonde woman falling overboard and into the sea.

However, when she reports the person going overboard, she is assured that the cabin next to hers was empty, and everyone on the boat was there and accounted for. Therefore, Lo has to spend the rest of the trip proving that someone has indeed died, even as her fellow shipmates are coming to believe that she is crazy.

It’s a good setup for a mystery, and it is handled competently here, although not exactly stylishly. Some of the more questionable plot points seem a little more noticeable in the film than they did in reading. Still, if you need the television equivalent of a decent beach read, you can do worse than The Woman in Cabin 10.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 11, 2025.