Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Woman in Cabin 10!

The Woman in Cabin 10 has finally arrived on Netflix, and this explosive murder mystery is one that demands the audience’s attention from start to finish. Filled with plenty of unpredictable twists and turns, Netflix’s latest is one of Keira Knightley’s better projects in recent years — and one that’s never afraid to be silly and pulpy.

The Woman in Cabin 10 has received generally favorable reviews from critics, and how it wraps up Laura’s story will make it one of this weekend’s most talked-about releases. The story is very exaggerated and complex (even unnecessarily so at times), and there’s a lot of rich character work and subtle foreshadowing that rewards multiple watches.

Every Clue That Anne Was Actually Carrie

The Woman in Cabin 10 is a film that strongly rewards multiple watches, as viewers will easily be able to spot the differences between Anne and Carrie once the latter adopts the former’s idenтιтy. The first obvious slip-up is when Carrie complains about her medication making her feel weak, just one day after Anne had told Laura she wasn’t taking her pills anymore.

But there’s another subtle hint before that. When the entire ship wakes up panicking about Laura’s “man overboard” call, Carrie (posing as Anne) remains calm in bed. This is because she knows what’s really happening and doesn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to herself. It’s also possible she hadn’t completed her “transformation” at that point, which is why she faces the wall.

Carrie also leaves the room unprompted any time she’s called upon to remember something from Anne’s past. This first happens when Laura turns up in her cabin the morning after Anne’s death, and it happens again when Danny Tyler plays a song that Anne once supposedly sang with him.

These hints are all played off as symptoms of Anne’s worsening memory, but it’s really just evidence that Carrie has ᴀssumed her idenтιтy and doesn’t know her well enough to play along. This heavy foreshadowing (without making anything too obvious) is a clear sign of a well-plotted twist, and The Woman in Cabin 10 executes it very well.

Bullmer’s Master Plan Explained

Although The Woman in Cabin 10 clearly draws inspiration from many great murder mystery films, this Netflix thriller subverts expectations by not revealing who‘s been killed until the back half of the story. In fact, this was Richard Bullmer’s plan all along – instead of outright killing his wife, he intended to replace her so nobody would suspect a thing.

The original plan is simple: sneak Carrie onto the ship, have Anne killed, and let Carrie take her place. But Bullmer’s plan takes an unexpected turn when Anne interrupts an intimate moment between her husband and his fake wife, causing Bullmer to go off-script. This is his first mistake, as the loud argument causes Laura to check up on them.

Of course, this isn’t revealed until late in the story, as we’re left mostly in the dark for the first half of the movie. But The Woman in Cabin 10 does a great job of using the typical tropes of a murder mystery to mislead the audience. We naturally ᴀssume that somebody is coordinating this attack, but in reality, it’s totally improvised.

This is a very fun way of flipping the genre on its head, rejecting the archetype of a “master plan” and proving that even the most well-planned crimes can go wrong. The film causes us to ask all the wrong questions, tricking us with a traditional murder in the dark but leaving the true crime right in front of their eyes.

Why Did Anne Cut Richard Out Of Her Will?

The Woman in Cabin 10 generally does a good job of emphasizing the characters’ motives and intentions at every turn, but the one character who doesn’t quite get enough development is Anne. This is because the film spends lots of time tricking the audience into believing that Carrie is Anne, so we know deceptively little about Richard’s real wife.

When it’s revealed that Anne is going to liquidate her ᴀssets and inject them into her charity foundation, this comes as a huge shock. The only real explanation she gives is that she wants to repay society for everything she’s been given in life — but even Laura doesn’t totally understand this decision.

It later becomes clear that Richard and Anne’s relationship was already going through a rough patch before the whole scheme with Carrie, so it’s possible that this contributed to her decision. Richard would have been in charge of the entire charity if she’d left the money to him, and if anybody knew how undeserving he was, it would have been Anne.

How Much Did The Crew Know About Richard’s Plan?

Another question that’s never truly answered by The Woman in Cabin 10 is exactly how much the crew knew (or suspected) about Richard’s true plan. The film’s final scene confirms that the captain and the doctor were both convinced of conspiracy to murder, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the others were innocent.

Besides the captain and the doctor, there are several other members of staff who prevent the guests from entering Laura’s room when she’s missing. Did they know the truth, or were they just acting on Richard’s orders? Ruth Ware praised Netflix’s adaptation of her book, but even she didn’t shed any light on the other crew members’ culpability.

Ultimately, whether these crew members were individually responsible for Anne’s death misses the point. The film uses them to create a growing sense of paranoia and oppression from Laura’s perspective, and it’s this suffocating atmosphere that makes The Woman in Cabin 10 such a compelling story.