The Hand That Rocks the Cradle [2025] plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.”
(from a traditional nursery rhyme)
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be coming soon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
However, if you’d like to know more about rationale of my ratings visit this explanatory site.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
WHAT HAPPENS: Wealthy lawyer Caitlyn Morales (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) meets with pro bono client Polly Murphy (Maika Monroe) who’s facing homelessness from a nasty landlord. Awhile later, after Caitlyn’s given birth to new daughter Josie (Nora and Lola Contreras)—joining her 10-year-old sister, Emma (Mileiah Vega)—Caitlyn runs into Polly again at a farmers’ market, they talk, Polly ends up being hired as a nanny by her overworked new friend, after she gets a reference from former employer Rosanna (Shannon Cochran). Polly seems to fit in easily with the family, including husband Miguel (Raúl Castillo), yet we see her one night putting food poisoning into Caitlyn’s fish stew for a dinner with friends giving everyone intestinal trouble, leaving Caitlyn questioning her skills as a cook. Soon, with a need to move from expensive L.A. Polly’s invited by the Morales parents to move into their guesthouse, but this seemingly-appreciative young woman not only breaks rules for the children by letting them eat forbidden sugar but also increases Caitlyn’s anxiety level by shaping some methamphetamine pills to look like her meds, even as Emma begins to bond more with Polly than Mom. All of this come to a head during a Fourth of July event when Polly buys some fireworks for Emma who accidently sets them off in her room, with Miguel seeing it as an accident while Caitlyn’s horrified, sends Polly away. After talking about it more with Miguel, Caitlyn finds Polly at a motel, invites her to return (although simultaneously asking friend Stewart [Martin Starr] to investigate Polly’s background while she tracks down Polly’s reference who turns out to be an AA group leader who lied about Polly in an attempt to help her turn her sad life around).
Steward finds out Polly was originally Rebecca, who, as a child, was the only survivor of a fire that destroyed her home, killing her parents and baby sister, leading her to a series of miserable foster homes. Another shocker is Caitlyn—then named Jennifer—set the fire in a desperate attempt to stop being abused by Rebecca’s father (why she was allowed to not face murder charges [script's class critique?], become Caitlyn, move away to a new life I’m not clear on, just as I don’t know why Polly knew who Caitlyn was as an adult while her new employer had no idea who Polly actually is). ⇒Stewart meets with Polly to tell her he knows all this, but because he hasn’t yet shared it with Caitlyn she kills him with his nearby baseball bat. Caitlyn assumes Polly’s guilty, finds her eating dinner with her family, tries to throw her out again but accidently hits Emma so Miguel throws his wife out instead. She’s allowed to visit Emma at the girl’s basketball game where they reconcile. Caitlyn goes home, finds Polly, they have a heated conversation leading to Polly breaking a glass, stabbing Cailyn; they fight, Polly’s pushed through a plate-glass window, Caitlyn grabs Josie and tries to drive away, Polly attacks her windshield causing Caitlyn to drive into an oncoming car, killing Polly. Miguel and Emma arrive, with a later scene showing the parents seemingly OK again, but in Josie’s room Emma tells her of Polly’s story, setting us up for a bad future for these young sisters.⇐
SO WHAT? This current movie is a sort-of-remake of a psychological horror film of the same title (Curtis Hanson, 1992) with some plot similarities to the original, especially the homicidal conflict between the 2 main female characters (if you want to know more about the 1992 version—with Spoilers that roughly correspond to this new one—feel free to visit this site for extensive details). I may have seen the earlier version, but, if so, I can’t say I remember it although apparently it provided a boost to Rebecca De Mornay’s career as it was quite financially successful, bringing in a healthy $88 million domestically (U.S.-Canada [$140 million worldwide], #9 for the year) as she played the secret-intended-to-be murderer, Mrs. Mott/Peyton Flanders, obsessed with causing harm to the wife/mother character, Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra); De Mornay also responded to feminist critiques of that movie back thenwith: “We have a lack of women writers and a lack of good roles for women. Because of this shortage, there’s the belief in some circles that when women are portrayed in the film, they must always be portrayed as wonderful human beings. This is a kind of minority thinking I don’t like. It’s counterproductive.” I can’t say that her response toward American social mores and their depictions in our popular films has changed all that much since the early 1990s, but at least this older version of … Cradle was a bit better accepted by the critical establishment than this new movie, with Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 67%, the Metacritic average score was at a very-close 64% (ratings of the current movie in this review’s section below).
Certainly there’s lot of effective tension in this new …Cradle, with unexpected complexity when we learn Caitlyn’s horrid backstory, but ultimately those tensions sure resolve themselves quickly in the Morales household when it wraps up, although that last scene with Emma and Josie does imply future situations that might become disturbing again. I guess my main problem is that while I can sort of understand the motivations that drove Caitlyn to her actions when she was a child and Polly’s actions as an adult I ultimately have minimal sympathy for either of them, nor a legal system that seems to have ignored Caitlyn’s crime, allowing her to move to a new location with a new identity (I can understand a bit more easily Rebecca’s shift to Polly, yearning for dramatic revenge, awful as it is). Overall, this was somewhat fascinating, even involving to watch, but I’m not truly raving about it.
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: If you’re intrigued to see what evolves in this updated version of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle you’ll need to turn to streaming where you’ll find it on Hulu, free to subscribers ($11.99 monthly if you want to explore this one and their other holdings), although I can’t say the OCCU is giving you much encouragement, with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a mere 44%, even as the Metacritic average score is surprisingly a bit higher at 52%. Speaking for those who found value in this movie (more so than I did) is Carla Meyer of my local San Francisco Chronicle: “In 1992, Hollywood slightly altered the formula of the women-demonizing psychological thrillers it churned out at the time. […] It worked. Icy-eyed Rebecca De Mornay’s performance as a berserk nanny who upends the life of her employer (Annabella Sciorra) lifted ‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’ into B-movie infamy. Although notably cheesy, the film was suspenseful throughout, sometimes believably dipping into horror. […] Although it holds some of the same contrivances as the original, Hulu’s new remake also maintains tension and features a masterful performance, this time by Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the mother. […] Lawyer Caitlin suddenly forgets about due diligence when hiring Polly. A scene where a character chops dinner ingredients while talking on the phone ends just as you think. The filmmakers then ramp up the gore, seemingly to jump-start a horror factor the original achieved more gradually.” I agree Winstead is quite effective here, although I’m equally-impressed with the chilling performance of Monroe; yet, many critics aren’t all that taken with either one of them in a fully-cinema experience.
For example, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter isn’t supportive of what you get in this Hulu remake: “But it dilutes the original’s lurid pleasures and destabilizes the central dynamic by putting the mother who has it all and the nanny hell-bent on destroying her life in a mental-instability contest. Maybe two damaged women for the price of one seemed a good idea on paper? […] But unlike Hanson’s film, where we knew from the start what was driving the vengeful widow going by ‘Peyton’ (played with a vicious chill by Rebecca De Mornay), Bloomberg’s script teases out the root of Polly’s seething grudge for far too long. […] Attempts to bulk up on dread with a whispery synth score and gloomy vocal tracks by Low and Nick Cave don’t yield much in terms of atmosphere, and the jolts of ugly violence seem inorganic to the general tone.” Unlike those who aren’t too satisfied with what they find in this version of … Cradle, I did find it creepy—even more so when Caitlyn’s past was revealed, which easily led me to my usual device of rounding out my reviews, the choice of a Musical Metaphor which somehow speaks to what I’ve been writing about; this time, Polly’s dangerous antics quicky reminded me of The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” (on their 1971 L.A. Woman album)—which I’ve used 8 times before so I must have been watching some grizzly movies over the years—as long as we do a gender switch from the male being sung about to Polly as a female wannabe killer. This video accompaniment I found works well with that metaphorical concept as the depicted woman at first seems to be a potential victim of a “killer on the road,” but, then, maybe she’s the killer after all; I’ll leave it you to both interpret the video and decide if the gruesome journey of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is how you’d decide to use some screen time in a home “entertaining” (?) fashion.
SHORT TAKES
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