The Woman In Cabin 10 Movie Completely Changes The Book's Ending — Does It Work?

Don't dress in your finery for any formal dinners if you haven't watched "The Woman in Cabin 10" on Netflix yet — massive spoilers lie ahead!

Keira Knightley's newest movie, "The Woman in Cabin 10," based on Ruth Ware's hit 2016 thriller novel of the same name, is finally on Netflix ... and if you, like me, read Ware's novel and then watched the movie, you know that the ending differs quite dramatically on the screen. So does it work? Actually, yes!

Let's start at the very beginning, though, as I hear that's a pretty and perhaps even very good place to start. In the film, Knightley plays Lauren "Lo" Blacklock, an investigative journalist who experienced something harrowing as a casualty of her job but, insistent on carrying on, takes a "relaxing" assignment from her editor (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw in a frankly thankless and tiny role) to board a luxury yacht called the Aurora and write about her experience. The expedition, led by the wealthy Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce) and his even-wealthier wife Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli), includes a handful of people, including other high-flying executives, but Lo is startled to see her ex-boyfriend and fellow journalist Ben (David Ajala) on board as well. After Lo is shown to her cabin, number eight, she tries to avoid crossing paths with Ben in the ship's hallways and ducks into cabin 10 to hide, finding the door unlocked; inside, she meets a woman who says her name is Carrie (Gitte Witt).

Late that night, after a formal dinner, Lo wakes up in the night and hears startling noises followed by a splash — and it certainly seems as if the titular woman in cabin 10 fell overboard or, potentially, was thrown. Nobody believes her, because nobody was staying in Cabin 10 in the first place. So, how does this resolve differently from the book?

In short, the way the book ends goes like this: Carrie, who is Richard Bullmer's secret mistress, watches as Richard kills Anne to secure her family fortune for himself (the movie adds a detail that Anne plans to donate her entire fortune to charity and cut Richard out entirely, and because she's in the final stages of cancer, she is going to die soon). Carrie asks Lo to help thwart his plan, and so she asks Lo to impersonate her and escape the boat; unfortunately, when Lo throws herself into the water to save herself, she loses Carrie's passport and any other personal details she might need to impersonate either her or Anne. Lo is nearly caught by Richard's forces on shore, but escapes, and later, Carrie wires her a wild amount of money after Richard's body is found; though his death is ruled a suicide, Lo knows that Carrie killed him.

The movie has a much more action-packed climax. Though Lo discovers Carrie and Richard's horrible deception, Carrie locks Lo up for a while before allowing her to escape. As she tries to get off the ship, Lo is waylaid by some of Richard's staffers on the boat, including a doctor who's been "treating" Anne, Robert Mehta (Art Malik). Ben tries to come to her rescue, but Robert gets to him first and hits him with the syringe. Before long, Ben is dead, and Lo jumps from the boat. Unlike in the book, where she goes to a quaint hotel only to discover that the staff there is paid by the Bullmers, she makes it to shore safely, warms herself by the fire in a quiet and empty cabin, and sets off for a gala where she knows Richard and his false Anne, Carrie, will be celebrating the fact that she changed her will. This is where things get pretty juicy.

Lo shows up at the Bullmer gala, where Richard is parading Carrie around and forcing her to pretend to be Anne, and she's ready to tell the truth. As she reads a letter given to her by Carrie — written by Anne — expressing her firm desire to donate her money and leave Richard out of the foundation, Richard becomes furious. When all of his friends and colleagues understand that Lo is telling the truth (and Carrie, as Anne, backs her up), Richard takes Carrie-Anne out of the gathering, clearly intending to kill her. 

Thankfully, that's when one of Richard's seemingly loyal employees, played by Amanda Collin, steps in. Though Lo desperately tries to save Carrie and defeat Richard, the red-headed woman gets there first and shoots Richard with a rifle she grabs from a nearby barn, allowing Lo to step in and embrace Carrie. Later, when she's back at work, Lo gets a message from Carrie, who's reunited with her daughter and eternally grateful to Lo for her help and support.

This is, arguably, way more interesting to watch on screen than the fascinating but much quieter ending of the novel written by Ruth Ware, so I definitely understand why director Simon Stone and his screenwriters Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse decided to change the dynamic here. Still, Ware's fans need to know that there's a pretty significant departure here, but honestly? I think both endings work for their respective mediums. 

Decide for yourself and check out "The Woman in Cabin 10," a worthy psychological thriller in either form, streaming on Netflix.