OCTOBER 16, 2025
GENRE: BLANK FROM HELL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)
I saw the original The Hand That Rocks The Cradle in theaters, but can't recall if I ever saw it a second time. If I did it had to have been right when it came to video, because before we watched this remake a friend noted Julianne Moore was in the original and I had no idea; I was only 12 when I saw it for the first (only?) time but by the mid 90s I had a mega crush on her and have been convinced for 30 years that the first time I saw her was via her bit part in The Fugitive. But even with my hazy memory, it didn't take long for me to realize that this version was, at least in theory, the right kind of remake, where it took the same basic plot but changed all the details, letting it succeed or fail on its own terms instead of just copying what someone else did thirty years ago.
So the two line pitch is the same: a career woman with two children decides to hire a nanny to help out, and after a few weeks of feeling the woman is the answer to all her problems, the mother starts to suspect that this "helper" might be dangerous. And she's right, as it turns out the nanny has a personal vendetta against the mom, and is seeking revenge. But this take changes all the details, and even weirdly hides the woman's agenda from us until the third act. In the original, we knew all along why the nanny (Rebecca DeMornay) targeted this family: the mom (Annabella Sciorra) had testified against DeMornay's rapey doctor husband, but here it's only revealed an hour or so into it.
Don't worry, it's not that new nanny Polly (Maika Monroe) hides her intentions until then. It's actually amusing how casual she is about some of her early transgressions, like poisoning one of mom's (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) dishes before a dinner party. But the switch means we never have the same kind of unnerving sympathy we felt for the DeMornay version, so she just comes off as another random psycho, and it's too late to fix the movie by the time we find out she actually has a good reason to want to go after Winstead and her family. Of course, since it's a third act reveal I can't get into it, but I can say it's very clunkily handled throughout, so it never quite works as (seemingly?) intended - despite her reason, we are never once sympathetic to her plight.
It doesn't help that the script is one of those ones where large chunks of the movie wouldn't even happen if people acted like normal human beings. Taking Moore's place as the meddling friend is Martin Starr, who goes through Monroe's trash and gets some of her DNA to run a background check on her. He finds out this tragic connection, but rather than call his best friend and tell her about it, he randomly has Monroe over and invites her in (to "explain herself") even though he's only doing this because she's already weirded them out enough to get suspicious. We also have to just roll with the idea that Winstead, who is overly protective to the extent that she won't even allow the family to have certain kinds of pesto sauce because of the oils in them, would settle for just one random reference by a complete stranger before allowing this woman to watch her children alone.
And then there's the stop sign. Early on, a neighbor speeds past their house and hits the baby stroller after it rolls out of their driveway (empty, thankfully), so Winstead says "There should be a stop sign there" as the scene continues, then repeats it in closeup. Then there's talk of a meeting about having one put up. Then there's a completely baffling scene where she's driving along and suddenly pulls over, gets out of her car, and inspects a different (busted) stop sign elsewhere. Later on her and Starr actually stand outside and watch the stop sign be installed, so by now they've clearly beaten us over the head enough that this stop sign is going to play a major part in the climax. But all it is is... someone misses the stop sign and causes an accident that dictates how the rest of the final fight goes. Personally, I think an ironic payoff, where the other driver DOES stop and Winstead realizes that her helicopter-y ways can be a detriment, or a running Monroe was able to get further away because the car stopped instead of plowing right into her, would have at least made this ridiculously blunt bit of foreshadowing pay off.
It's also simply not that suspenseful or tense. The highlight for such things is probably a scene where Winstead comes home and finds Monroe hanging with her husband and also her girlfriend, and that's only because we know in the original that DeMornay had designs on Sciorra's hubby so it stands to reason that this incarnation might follow suit. But nah, nothing really comes of it, nor do they explore the interesting idea that Monroe may actually be into Winstead's bisexual character (and vice versa). A goofy little bit where Winstead removes one of Monroe's socks while she sleeps is about as close as they get to having the women get intimate, which would have been at least a new dynamic to explore, especially since they establish her and her husband haven't had sex since the baby was born. Then again relationships aren't the movie's strong suit across the board; poor Riki Lindhome pops up as Starr's girlfriend in two scenes, the first of which has her lamenting that she wants a baby (with Starr saying that they'll discuss it later) but in the second we learn they don't even live together, making the idea that they're apparently talking about having a child a bit premature. Why they cast Lindhome to play this role, which would be thankless even for a first time performer, is beyond me.
(Without spoiling particulars, the movie perhaps inadvertently creates its best moment in this second scene. If you watch it, consider what Lindhome plans to do for Starr's sake, and what happens to him next.)
The score is also bizarrely ill-fitting, often sounding more like the soundtrack to a movie about a drug trip or maybe some kind of A24 drama. Not the end of the world, but adds to the feeling that this was a movie where a producer said "I have the rights to remake this movie!" and everyone that got involved after had a different idea of how to modernize this '90s staple. As with The Stepfather, modern technology makes a lot of these kind of plots harder to pull off, because you can just Google/check social media for anyone and learn more about them than Winstead does with her one (1) phone call to an unknown reference (who eventually re-enters the story and is yet another person in the movie who can't be bothered to act like a normal human being). So they side step that sort of thing and just hope we won't notice, despite (again) establishing Winstead as an overbearing worry wort.
Basically: it just doesn't work, man. The leads do their best and it's always nice to see a modern movie being shot in Los Angeles, but without any real thrills and a convoluted backstory, there's just nothing that justifies its existence, either. After a while the audience was laughing at it (it's not a comedy), so was at least an amusing experience to see this direct to streamer movie with a crowd, but that's not going to apply to you watching alone at home. I mean you can give it a shot I guess (bring a few friends over?), but if your Hulu subscription is about to expire, I certainly wouldn't renew it just to see it if I were you.
What say you?
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