‘The Woman in Cabin 10’ Review: A Cruise into Familiar Waters (Netflix)

The booming market of thrillers adapted from bestselling novels has found a textbook example in The Woman in Cabin 10 — a film so traditional in its setup that it feels almost nostalgic. Set largely in one confined location, it offers all the expected ingredients of a mystery cruise: a glamorous cast of suspects, a single eyewitness, and a crime that may not even exist. Based — with considerable liberties — on Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel, the film stars Keira Knightley as a British journalist caught between trauma and paranoia, surrounded by an ensemble of talented actors who don’t quite get the material they deserve.

Knightley plays Laura “Lo” Blacklock, an investigative reporter for The Guardian, admired for her sharp instincts but haunted by the scars left from previous assignments. Hoping to reset, she convinces her editor (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to let her cover a luxury cruise hosted by millionaire Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce). Bullmer plans to announce a charitable foundation in honor of his dying wife Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli), who is battling cancer. The voyage, aboard his private yacht, quickly turns into a parade of privilege: a cynical doctor (Art Malik), an obnoxious art-world couple (David Morrissey and Hannah Waddingham), a washed-up rock star (Paul Kaye), Lo’s ex-boyfriend (David Ajala), and a handful of socialites who seem to have stepped straight out of an influencer’s feed.

Then comes the inevitable: by accident, Lo steps into Cabin 10 — not her own — and meets a mysterious blonde woman (Gitte Witt) just stepping out of the shower. Later that night, she hears a commotion, a body hitting the water, and spots what seems to be blood on the wall. But when she raises the alarm, the crew insists that no one is missing. The stain disappears. Her description of the woman draws blank stares. Soon the journalist becomes the story: a possibly unstable witness who might be seeing ghosts.

Of course, she isn’t — and soon the film settles into familiar territory: a woman piecing together a mystery that everyone else refuses to believe. The question isn’t only who did it, but whether anything happened at all.

Director Simon Stone stages the intrigue with solid professionalism but little imagination. The film’s tone rarely moves beyond that of a “book club thriller” — the cinematic equivalent of a beach read. It borrows from Agatha Christie, rides the wave of recent “contained mysteries” like Knives Out, and sticks faithfully to the formula of the amateur detective. Yet for all its twists and fake-outs, The Woman in Cabin 10 never escapes the sense of mechanical storytelling. Every coincidence feels convenient, every revelation slightly forced, and by the final act the logic begins to unravel.

Its biggest problem lies at the core: what works in a novel feels contrived when visualized. The supporting characters — a potentially delightful rogues’ gallery — are mostly left adrift, serving as red herrings rather than people. By the time the mystery resolves, plausibility has long gone overboard. What remains is a film that looks expensive, moves briskly, and leaves no aftertaste. A glossy distraction made with competence but without conviction, The Woman in Cabin 10 is likely to vanish from memory as quickly as it appears in the Netflix carousel — forgotten by viewers, and perhaps by its makers too.