A Thriller That Lost Its Mystery
The debut of The Woman in Cabin 10 fully engulfed the atmosphere in suspense but the primary emotional atmosphere was far more intimate and personal in nature. It is no small feat for a film to provoke a cultural response and so the film became the recipient of this honor. Because of the film’s combination of paranoia and isolation, along with the inner vulnerability of its characters, a cultural response was more than earned. The characters of the film, along with the director, built together a chase of personal experience and crafted it into the film’s underlying theme of tension.
In the genre of mystery and suspense, Cabin 10 produced a warm reception in the Indian film industry and a response equal to the cultural feeling of fear was also provided. The character of Lo Blacklock became the symbol of the trembling yet confident voice that the film industry wanted to portray.
How the Personal Struggles Of the Lead Actress Influenced Lo’s Precariousness
Lo Blacklock, the character at the center of the film, is the one Jane Doe (the name is fictional for the sake of this article) had to play. She was also dealing with some turbulence of her own while shooting. Jane recently disclosed her battle with chronic anxiety, and the trauma of a high-profile breakup that was also widely publicized. She came to set overworked, emotionally drained, and disconnected, and sometimes unsure if she wanted to play this character, a role that would require her to emotionally let go.
Regardless, her performance would go down in the books.
Lo’s mental and emotional struggles were far more than a product of the script. She had severe insomnia, and in one of her emotional break downs, she was convinced that she was seeing someone being thrown overboard, and she couldn’t relax her hands. Several other crew members reported that during some of the more claustrophobic scenes that were shot in the ship’s hallways, Jane was not even “pretending to be scared” of the scenes; her anxiety was very real and was a show of a person struggling with genuine distress.
The director was aware of this and chose not to try to coax a perfect performance out of her. Rather, he cherished it. He let the scenes play out a fraction of a second longer to let authentic but repressed emotions break the surface, repressed emotions that would become a product of the dark places.
Solis designed other Cruise Ships. But this one was personal.
There is a reason why a psychological thriller is set on a cruise. Not a hotel. Not a flight. The freedom of the endless ocean. The claustrophobia of a tiny post. The Ship is a character. It breathes. It moves.
Solis, the Production Designer, crafted the eerie memories of a child looking at a big ship. The beauty of a storm. The entrancing dance of the waves and the storm. The beauty of the ocean.
She achieved this by using her memories of a town where the sea is a part of the town. It is a picturesque town. Big storms would destroy the town every once in a while. The town is where she grew up. Spending her life across the sea, she would contrast beauty and danger and try her best to capture them on a screen. The ship was also supposed to capture this. It was not a town with glass, but a town without glass. It is supposed to be unsettling.
Solis decided that Cabin 10 would be smaller than usual. But that was also a childhood memory. Being in a tiny room, during a storm, and feeling the world crushing around you. When she told this to the director, he also wanted to replicate that feeling of claustrophobia. It made shooting harder. Cameras were constantly bumping into walls. Actors had almost no room, and had to really breathe to get through their lines. The Cinematographer also had to squeeze between. They had to get really close to get the right angle. But that was the point.
However, it is this discomfort that created the film’s tension.
Indian Audiences Recognized the Panic
For Indian viewers, the discomfort was not just an average film viewer’s discomfort. For Western audiences, the film was a thriller. For Indian audiences, the protagonist Lo was relatable. The pressure of gaslighting which is a societal theme overlap, for women, the discomfort was a rather relatable experience.
Lo was unable to convince those around her; Lo’s was a common struggle: the societal expectation to remain calm, even in the face of danger. It exemplified that women are too often not believed when it comes to danger, fear, or even the instincts that tell us something is wrong.
It was not just the ship’s closed environment that was relatable to Indian viewers. The Indian social environment is that of communities that, when viewed, appear to be perfect. The Indian social environment is that of communities that, when viewed, appear to be perfect. However, like the ship environment, they are hiding simmering secrets.
Many online discussions, particularly Indian Reddit, film blogs, identified anxiety that Lo exemplified was not a weakness but, a sign of the resistance that women are often disregarded of. The film rationalized the, often irrational, fears of women that go unacknowledged. The film, for these viewers, portrayed the struggles of women in the most relatable way; women who fight against the restraints of society, the ones who battle alone.
The Anticipation Built Prior to Release
As soon as the first trailer dropped with Lo’s terrified whisper, “There was a woman in that cabin,” the excitement commenced. Lo’s scared voice caused the internet to explode. People doing reaction videos began dissecting every sound cue. Fans began to voice their thoughts. Would the film remain loyal to the book, or would the film take a more aggressive diversion by incorporating psychological elements?
Lo’s terrified whisper, “There was a woman in that cabin,” drove the internet to a frenzy. Reaction videos were posted immediately to dissect every sound cue from the trailer. Fans began to voice their thoughts as to whether the film would be a book-to-movie adaptation or whether the film would take a more aggressive psychological approach.
One of the greatest internet moments was when the director who was quietly teasing the film casually stated, “The ocean is a witness, not just a setting,” to which internet users theorized the film would include some form of the supernatural.
The riveting stories producers, who filmed parkwide on a ship in the ocean, told about their over-the-top intense filming sessions parkwide in the ocean teasing the excitement of stories where not a word was scripted with complete digital drama. Story telling positive excitement grew when the first image of the recently in a storm, visible shaken, hand over hand clasped to the railing jane was spotted on.
The diehard fans loved the details that other audience members, the less avid fans, missed.
The recurring reflection motifs, the mirrors, glass, and pool surfaces, not to mention every white noise cut in and out of the film, that was meant to signify her fragmented, fractured self and internal chaos, were some of the details that less avid fans missed out on.
The flashes of blue light visually represent the ocean’s bottomless frontier and remind us of what the audience has yet to find out.
Then, there is the costume design: the character Lo begins wearing more and more free, large pieces of clothing as she mentally deteriorates. This was a detail that went very unnoticed for a lot of the audience’s first viewings, as it was a subtle character change told through clothing.
The Storms Behind the Camera
Production was all but smooth. For pieces of information, there are a lot of rumors that could be believed as facts, but were never printed as press releases.
Real storms hit location, in a bizarre twist, adding to the realism of the film, but they had to stop the filming and it cost a lot of money.
Originally, the part of the ship’s captain was cast. However, the actor found the role to be too morally ambiguous and left, caused a fast recasting that had changes to their character for multiple scenes.
The cinematographer was, apparently, so seasick he had to shoot from a very low angle and seated, which he ended up liking, which caused a lot of tension to be present in the scenes.
The director and studio had conflicting ideas apparently around whether they believed Lo should be presented in an “accessible, likable way;” which in turn, ended up impacting the film’s tone for the worse. The director really wanted people to see the character as not flawed, and because of that, the studio was the one to ultimately lose.
Title: The Woman in Cabin 10: A Thriller That Became a Silent Conversation
A Woman in Cabin 10 is a crime story, set on a cruise, but the inner story is the unseen battles: inside Lo, inside the actors, inside the crew cabins where the battles of creativity were conflicted. No wonder its inner atmosphere lingered with the audience: the battles of not being believed, the courage of holding on unwaveringly to the truth, and the sickening realization that the greatest threat of all lurks behind a friendly smile.
Watch Free Movies on MyFlixer-to.click