Keira Knightley is making waves, both literally and figuratively, in Netflix’s upcoming thriller The Woman in Cabin 10.
Based on Ruth Ware’s best-selling 2016 novel, the psychological drama strands Knightley’s character on a luxury yacht with a secret, a mystery, and a dangerously unreliable sense of reality.
And early buzz shows it’s about to leave Netflix’s previous spy hit Black Doves dead in the water.
Knightley plays Laura “Lo” Blacklock, a travel journalist on assignment aboard a $150 million yacht.
Things take a dark turn when she sees a woman thrown overboard in the middle of the night, but when she raises the alarm, she’s told no one is missing.
With all passengers accounted for, Lo becomes the lone voice insisting something sinister is going on. And as she digs deeper, she risks becoming the next person to disappear.
Director Simon Stone, known for The Dig, describes the setting as “a kind of trapped-in-a-bunker thriller,” only this particular bunker happens to float through the Norwegian fjords.
“It’s a kind of prison that you can’t get off of,” Stone says. “But it’s also the most luxurious prison in the world.”
The film’s tension doesn’t just come from its isolated setting. Stone wanted to upend traditional thriller tropes, especially the ones that cast women as emotionally unstable or unreliable.
Instead, he directed Knightley to play the role with the same clarity and charisma usually reserved for male leads in the genre.
“I told her, ‘You’re Kevin Costner in this,’” Stone recalls. “We’ve seen decades of films where the woman is unstable or irrational.
I wanted this to be different. I wanted the audience to believe her from the start and Keira absolutely delivers that.”
The Woman in Cabin 10 also stars Guy Pearce, Hannah Waddingham, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Ajala, and David Morrissey, among others.
Filming took place in Scotland and Norway aboard a real eight-cabin yacht, with the cast and crew often out at sea for 12 hours at a time.
The conditions were tight—crew members had to switch shoes for inside and outside, and most of the cast shared just two bedrooms between them.
“It was tough but bonding,” Stone says. “There weren’t trailers to disappear into. It made the performances feel grounded and real.”
Knightley is in nearly every scene, carrying the film from start to finish. According to Stone, she approached the emotional high-wire act with both skill and humour.
“We had this inside joke on set, ‘How paranoid am I in this scene? Is this a level four? A level seven?’, but she always hit the exact right tone,” he says.
What sets Cabin 10 apart from other thrillers on the platform, including Black Doves, is its focus on psychological depth and narrative precision.
There’s a major twist, one that fans of the book will expect, but Stone teases that the film takes it further. “It’s epic,” he says. “Not just in what happens, but in how it makes you feel. It’s rare to find a twist that works on both a plot level and a metaphoric one.”
Knightley’s performance may be the strongest argument for a follow-up. Ware recently released a sequel novel, The Woman in Suite 11, and Stone hints that a continuation is possible - if the audience demands it.
“Keira has created something really special with this character,” Stone says. “If people love her as much as we do, there’s definitely room for more.”
Compared to the shadowy intrigue of Black Doves, this is something sharper, stranger, and more emotionally charged.
Netflix's The Woman in Cabin 10 premieres October 10.
