Netflix’s The Mystery in Cabin 10, a 6-part thriller that premiered October 10, 2025, with a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score and 18 million premiere hours, has plunged viewers into a chilling high-seas nightmare, starring Keira Knightley as a journalist whose horrifying discovery aboard a luxury cruise spirals into a vortex of doubt, danger, and deception that no one believes, crafting a “pulse-pounding” tale that’s being hailed as “more haunting than The Undoing.” Directed by Atonement’s Joe Wright and adapted from Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel by The Girl on the Train’s Erin Cressida Wilson, the series—filmed on a Norwegian fjord-bound ship from January to July 2025—stars Knightley, 40, as Lo Blacklock, a travel writer whose glimpse of a “body overboard” unravels a conspiracy where crew conceal crimes and passengers harbor grudges.
The saga’s sinister surge? Spellbinding: Episode 1’s “Night Waves” catapults Lo into the fray, a midnight scream and a splash etched with doubt, pulling her into a maze where colleagues dismiss her “hysteria” and clues surface as sabotage. Knightley’s Lo? A “masterclass in mettle,” her wry resolve warping to weary watchfulness, unraveling a ripple of regrets where a captain’s “assurance” masks menace. Co-stars carve the chaos: Eddie Redmayne as the “suspicious skipper” with a sting, Hannah Waddingham as the “haunted heiress” with a grudge, and Indira Varma as the “calculating” confidant with secrets. Wilson’s script quivers with quips—“The sea swallows secrets, not screams”—but the “brutal” brutality bites: a botched cabin burial buries a body, a VVIP viper’s venom turns ally to assassin.
The “haunting truth”? Seismic: Ware’s novel, a 350k-seller, inspired the “no one believes” dread, Wright’s direction amplifying the “pacy” probe with “spooky” soundscapes and “authentic” accents in the fjord’s “eerie charm.” The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan raves “very well-made, pacy drama” with Knightley’s “reliably likeable” levity; The Independent’s Ed Power hails Redmayne’s “Icily Glamorous” iciness and the “understated and spooky” score. Evening Standard’s Vicky Jessop praises the “overall confidence, style and authenticity.” Skeptics? “Mired in mist,” but the 1-in-2 clue-to-cliff ratio hooks, BARB metrics outgunning The Jetty.
This isn’t thriller tinsel; it’s a tempest of terror, The Mystery in Cabin 10’s mystery a requiem for the resolute where doubts deepen and dangers drown. Lo’s lens? Lethal. The sea’s secrets? Sinister. October 10? Not a drop—a deluge. Binge it; the screams sear, the shadows shatter. Knightley’s nerve? Numbing, notorious. The obsession? Overnight, inescapable.
