Every movie teaches us something, and “The Woman in Cabin 10” offers us this: Um, if you are stuck on a luxury yacht with a weird and annoying group of people that randomly includes your ex-boyfriend, all of them caught in the kind of lighting that makes everyone look deeply sinister, maybe, I don’t know, try to leave? Or just stay in your cabin with room service and earbuds in, so you don’t hear the person possibly getting murdered next door who may or may not actually exist?

This is, alas, rather specific life advice and is not heeded by Lo (Keira Knightley); if it were, we wouldn’t have to sit through “The Woman in Cabin 10,” a soggy thriller in which every scene, even a daytime one early on at the newspaper where Lo works, seems to take place in ominously blue darkness. Lo, who is apparently a journalist but never takes notes and mostly just seems traumatized (well, that part checks out), can’t get anyone on the ship to believe that she met a mysterious Woman in Cabin 10 who later ended up in Davy Jones’ locker after leaving some incriminating hair in the drain. (It’s a telling fact of this movie that I remember the performance of the hair rather better than that of most of the cast.) The fellow passengers, in their tasteful neutrals, think Lo’s quite mad — except for the one leaving threatening messages on the mirror during Lo’s mud massage. Wait, are journalists allowed to accept free mud massages? Never mind.

In the Ruth Ware novel on which this movie is (rather loosely) based, Lo drinks a lot, which is perhaps the way to enjoy “The Woman in Cabin 10.” Here, poor Knightley doesn’t even get the fun of playing hammered, but is stuck delivering endless variations on looking terrified, running down weirdly dark mirrored hallways, and occasionally and unconvincingly punching someone out. Finally, after 92 minutes that seems like days, the movie ends, with someone soothingly murmuring the only words I wanted to hear: “It’s over, it’s over.”

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‘THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10’

1.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for some violence and language)

Running time: 1:32

How to watch: Netflix

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