The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025) Review

Ruth Ware has built a career on fast-paced, twist-laden mysteries prioritising momentum over sustained thematic depth. Her novels are designed to be accessible and compulsively readable, built around propulsive plotting rather than anything more conceptually ambitious. It’s a formula that has proven commercially successful, and though they may lack profundity, her popularity suggests she knows how to keep readers turning the pages, if not necessarily thinking beyond them.

Based on Ware’s 2016 novel of the same name, Simon Stone’s ‘The Woman in Cabin 10’ is an interminably unexceptional feature. It follows Laura Blacklock, a journalist invited aboard the luxury yacht of a dying billionaire, to write about her charitable foundation. The trip takes a sinister turn after Laura witnesses a woman being thrown overboard- an act nobody else is willing to acknowledge. Can Laura unravel the mystery, or will she be sent to a watery grave?

Exhaustingly dull, the film is the epitome of blandness; a whodunnit lacking suspense. Whatever intrigue Ware’s novel may have had is completely lost in translation to the screen. A mystery that never mystifies, the narrative is predictable and boring, full of telegraphed twists and limp attempts at misdirection that never generate even a flicker of unease. Stone’s direction is inert, draining scenes of urgency and atmosphere, leaving them to unfold like abandoned storyboards.

It plays like a knock-off Agatha Christie written by AI, with Blacklock investigating the murder while surrounded by a gallery of wealthy suspects. However, unlike, say, John Guillermin’s ‘Death on the Nile’, it is plainly obvious who the villain is from the outset, and there is very little effort made to disguise it. There’s no intrigue, no shifting alliances, no clever red herrings. There’s also no sense of fun- the tone being overly dour, grim and self-serious, as if Stone was terrified that levity might accidentally make the film enjoyable.

Incredibly, four screenwriters are credited, yet none of them seem to have ever had a conversation before, so stilted and inane is the dialogue. To call the characterisation involved cookie-cutter is an insult to the baking utensil. Characters are stock archetypes- from the intrepid Blacklock, to the parade of wealthy caricatures populating the yacht: the washed-up rocker, the sinister billionaire host whose every line drips with ominous self-importance, the vapid influencer stuck to her phone.

The film does nothing interesting or new with these lame, tired stereotypes, and has nothing to say about them either. A whodunnit can survive without deep character studies, but it cannot survive without characters who matter. Here, they’re little more than cardboard cutouts arranged around the yacht, contributing nothing to the atmosphere and even less to the plot. It’s paint-by-numbers filmmaking by someone with a bargain-basement brush.

Often, films made for streaming sites are burdened with an oddly lifeless visual style; the Netflix sheen of mediocrity, if you will. That’s the case again here, with director of photography Ben Davis doing nothing of note behind the camera; the cinematography being flat, artless and aggressively uninspired. Instead of using the confined, glossy setting of the yacht to build claustrophobia or tension, Davis renders the location as visually uninteresting as the script, robbing the film of any atmosphere it might have scraped together.

Benjamin Wallfisch’s soundtrack is generic, while costume designer Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh doesn’t do much to write home about. In addition, Mark Day and Katie Weiland’s editing doesn’t help matters; scenes stitched together with all the rhythm of a broken metronome. The film plods along, feeling considerably longer than its 92-minute runtime.

Keira Knightley is a talented actress, but Blacklock is such a one-dimensional character even she can’t elevate the material. Lisa Loven Kongsli doesn’t bring much life to the role of the dying billionaire, while Guy Pearce seems content to ham it up as her seedy husband. Further, all of the supporting guests aboard the yacht- including Hannah Waddingham, Paul Kaye and Daniel Morrisey- are trapped in thinly written, uninteresting roles, left adrift in a sea of mediocrity.

In short, Simon Stone’s ‘The Woman in Cabin 10’ is dead on arrival: a mystery that never intrigues, a thriller that never thrills. Its narrative is unengaging and predictable, while the dialogue is laughably bad. Completely and utterly bland, it is unseasoned cinematic gruel. With a tragic waste of Keira Knightley, uninspired visuals and a lethargic pace, the most remarkable thing about ‘The Woman in Cabin 10’ is how unremarkable it is.