"The Woman in Cabin 10" (2025) Should Have Stayed Faithful to the Book

When journalist Lo gets an invite to a luxury yacht vacation, it seems like the perfect way to escape the trauma of her real life and write a puff piece article about rich people having fun in international waters. While she typically reports on more hard-hitting stories, she’s in desperate need of a break. Unfortunately for Lo, she witnesses a woman get thrown overboard on her first day at sea. From there, she is forced to investigate alone while rebuffing the wealthy passengers’ anger and desire for privacy.

The Woman in Cabin 10 is a Netflix movie based on Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel of the same name. Unfortunately for the success of the movie, the title and high-level synopsis are where the similarities between the two pieces end, and this did not serve the movie well.

In the novel, Lo is a travel writer at a dead-end job who gets to go on the cruise only when her boss can no longer make it. She’s insecure and riddled with anxiety, facts that are leveraged against her when she makes her murder accusations. The show, on the other hand, makes Lo an investigative journalist who needs a break after her last source was murdered in front of her. This makes her eventual successes more plausible, but her bumbling nature far less so. I want to root for the struggling writer! I don’t feel as much of a connection to Investigator Lo, especially given the lack of time spent to flesh out her backstory.

Perhaps that last point is the largest problem with the movie as a whole. Despite the work that Kiera Knightley does playing Lo, I never felt much of a connection to the character or her emotional needs. While Netflix and Knightley managed an effective collaboration in the Black Doves limited series, there isn’t enough time to make her feel like a real person in the film. The only character that felt real was Ben, Lo’s ex and a photographer played by David Ajala. Ajala did a fantastic job of showing his concern for Lo while simultaneously making her life more difficult by telling others about her plans and schemes. I liked the two of them together and was most compelled anytime they were in a scene.

The strength of this chemistry, along with the limitations of a movie format, is likely why the movie made the decision to write out Jonah—Lo’s boyfriend and the source of her rescue in the novel—completely. It wouldn’t have made sense to flash between the yacht and New York City, so instead, movie Lo was single. That impacted the ending of the story and also meant that Lo was left with nobody on her side. This could have been interesting if her alcoholism and the depth of her PTSD was explored more, but instead it became a Liam Neeson-esque solo mission.

It isn’t that this film was bad, per se. It still managed to effectively explore the way wealth makes people unaccountable to the world at large and how easily women—especially, but not exclusively, of a lower socioeconomic status—can find themselves at the mercy of powerful men. Every man in this film aside from Ben is a horrible person that uses his physicality to intimidate Lo. That is emphasized by the way The Woman in Cabin 10 film twists the reveal (which I will explore more with spoilers below) into far more of a girl-power narrative than in Ware’s original work. It is the rich white men against the women, with the Black man finding himself trapped between the two worlds and eventually being forced to not only choose Lo’s, but to face the biggest consequences of anyone involved. 

The shining star of this movie was Hannah Waddingham, who plays the frequently drunk, bitchy-yet-powerful woman of the yacht. Her character, Heidi, was a delight each time she was on screen. I do feel like the tension between Heidi and Lo was undercut by the commentary of Grace (Kaya Scodelario), an influencer paid to pretend to date one of the men on the trip, but Waddingham was so good at her role that the scenes were entertaining regardless.

The Spoiler Section

Welcome to a new review format I am considering making a regular feature: The Spoiler Section. At the end of reviews, I will discuss some of my spoiler-filled thoughts. If you don’t want to be spoiled, now would be the time to stop reading.

As mentioned above, this film is making an intentional point about wealth and the lack of consequences. What I am not sure they are doing intentionally is making a commentary on race. Only one “good guy” dies in the film: Ben. The fact that the only Black man in the cast is also the only person to suffer directly from violence is interesting if it were more fleshed out, but instead seems more like an accident. Ben’s Blackness is never addressed by anyone and instead he is yet another person of color who sacrifices himself for the white heroine. 

I also found the reveal of who the woman in cabin 10 was to be lacking in the movie. 

The yacht trip was put together by Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce) as a present for his wife, Annie (Lisa Loven Kongsli), who is dying of cancer. Unfortunately for Annie, Richard found out that Annie was disinheriting him and giving all of her money to charity. He found a woman, Carrie (Gitte Witt), who looks similar to Annie and paid her to impersonate the dying woman long enough to sign a new will. What Carrie didn’t know was that Richard also planned to kill Annie while on the trip.

In the books, Carrie is in love with Richard and she begins impersonating Annie in the real world so that the two can go out in public together. In the movie, Carrie was found using facial recognition software and has no real connection with Richard. This makes her sympathize with Lo and ultimately help her out, developing a Girl Power narrative. If they were going to go this route, I wish Carrie’s perspective had been more present throughout the film. I want to see how she is doing and understand her motivations more intimately. As it stands, Carrie feels like a surface-level puppet, moving in ways that serve the plot but don’t actually create a human being. 

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Overall, I’m disappointed in The Woman in Cabin 10, but that’s at least in part because of my love of Ruth Ware’s novel. If you come into this movie expecting a silly little thriller about rich people on a yacht, perhaps you’ll have a good time. If you expect anything like the mystery and exploration of mental health found in the book, you will find yourself underwhelmed.