The Hand That Rocks the Cradle review – a serviceable remake of the 90s thriller | Thriller movies

TA mainstay of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the brooding thriller At Risk attempted to expose the vulnerabilities of our everyday lives, suggesting that danger could arise from anyone, anywhere. It may be a co-worker (Temperature, Disclosure), a spouse (Sleeping with the Enemy, The Dream Lover), a lover (Fatal Attraction, Don’t Talk to Strangers), an inmate (Pacific Heights, Lonely White Female), a parent (Mother’s Boys, The Benefit of the Doubt), or even a child (The Good Son, The Crush), a subspecies that insists on keeping the fight where We assumed it was safe.

One of the most effective examples from the era was Curtis Hanson’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, because it played on a particularly terrible fear of parents — that the person you entrusted to protect your child has a nefarious agenda. Rebecca De Mornay’s vengeful nanny became one of the most indelible villains of the ’90s. Attractive, childless horror. blond A woman who wreaks havoc in the suburbs and strikes fear into the hearts of established moviegoers around the world (it grossed $140 million globally, a number that would be closer to $320 million with today’s inflation). As the industry continues to plunder that decade (with everything from Buffy to Clueless to Urban Legend returning soon), it makes commercial sense to rock the cradle again.

But attempts to revitalize this particular brand of film have so far not borne fruit with a failed TV remake of “Fatal Attraction That Seduces No One” and a proposed reconsideration of “Fear” and “Sleeping with the Enemy” at the announcement stage (the jury will rule on a Javier Bardem-led “Cape Fear” reboot and an alleged remake of “Single White Female” with Jenna Ortega). It’s fortunate that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle isn’t an eight-part series, and although it was originally promoted as a theatrical release, it has wisely landed on Disney+ and Hulu instead (the market, unfortunately, probably won’t accept a homegrown thriller without an A-list presence at this moment, as is the case even with films featuring big stars like Keanu Reeves, Julia Roberts, Dwayne Johnson, and Channing Tatum). And Jennifer Lopez was floundering.)

As unnecessary ’90s nostalgia plays go, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is one of the less egregious examples of recent times (the low bar was set and maintained by last year’s atrocious remake of The Crow), usefully entertaining remakes that manage to add enough tweaks without losing the basic delights of the original. In the update, Caitlin (Mary Elizabeth Winstead taking over from Annabella Sciorra) is a wealthy, pregnant lawyer with a streak of social awareness, doing good work by providing free legal services to those in need. She helps Polly (Target Follower Maika Monroe) fight a rent increase and the two later bump into each other, while Caitlin needs help with her newborn. Polly steps in, who has expressed her desire to return to babysitting, and soon becomes part of the family, and probably knows the rest.

We all know what’s coming, but that doesn’t excuse Monroe’s decision to play Polly with a more overtly sinister streak from the start, a choice that makes it difficult to see why Caitlyn’s wealthy mother would hire her (there’s something interesting in the extent to which the liberal guilt of a down-on-her-luck Los Angeles woman might lead to some blind spots, but there’s not enough of that woven here).

Micah Blumberg’s script finds some nice additions (Polly is gay and Caitlin is bisexual, which means there’s less sexual tension between the two women this time around and also leads to a wonderfully complex dinner table scene), but it can’t fix one of the perennial problems of films that use this formula. Caitlin, like so many before her, is someone who has legitimate concerns and is met with disbelief from those who love her, so she immediately chooses the side of an outsider instead, and while, as these films often do, she has a history of instability, it doesn’t quite warrant the response. Polly’s motivations have also been updated, and while they help fix one of the original film’s problems (it’s one of many that turns a grieving mother into a child-stealing psychopath), the details of her plan don’t hold up to much scrutiny.

It’s this dissonance, with the earnest and absurd jostling for space, that the film suffers from. Horror director Michelle Garza Cervera opts for a slow, muted burn (it’s a compelling argument for more studio work) and Winstead gives an earnest performance, with the film existing mostly in a grounded dramatic world. But the plot is often laughably absurd and the flashes of violence are so gruesome that it’s never clear how seriously we should take any of this, and it’s a good time masquerading as a prestige drama. Monroe’s performance is also stuck somewhere between the two extremes, a powerful threat but giving us none of the deliciousness that the more confident and ultimately more terrifying De Mornay brought to the role. The cradle still rocks, but this can be done with a steadier hand.