„The Woman in Cabin 10“ director Simon Stone breaks down that twist change from the book, and why he did it that way.
“The Woman in Cabin 10” is now streaming on Netflix and, like many movie adaptations of books, it makes some key changes — particularly when it comes to the twist of the story.
This perhaps goes without saying, but just so we’re clear, there will be very large spoilers ahead for the film.
Based on Ruth Ware’s book of the same name, “The Woman in Cabin 10” stars Keira Knightley as Laura “Lo” Blacklock, a journalist who gets invited aboard a superyacht to cover a charity event held by the uber-wealthy to support cancer research. But, after seeing someone go overboard in the night, she’s gaslit by everyone onboard, after all passengers on the manifest are accounted for.
The thing is, thanks to her job, Lo very recently saw a woman get murdered for agreeing to speak with her on a story. So everyone onboard the yacht insists that Lo was imagining things based on her trauma. The journalist is 100% certain about what she saw, though, and that certainty was something that was important to director Simon Stone.
“I think the films that we make plant seeds of the kind of archetypes and stereotypes that we see in society,” he explained to TheWrap. “People use phrases like ‘main character energy,’ or ‘gaslit,’ or memes come from movies, TV shows. So the content that we create as filmmakers, as TV makers, is deeply influential, even if it gets misused and it wasn’t our original intent.”
Stone said he was adamant that while “Woman in Cabin 10” concerns a woman whose cries for help are not believed, he was careful about how, exactly, he told that story.
