The Hand That Rocks the Cradle [2025] plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

“Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock.

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.

                   The Hand That Rocks the Cradle [2025]

                 (Michelle Garza Cervera) rated R 102 min.

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.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

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

              

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

 

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list).  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page.  We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us!  Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).

 

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please 

use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.

          

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

            

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 18,473.  (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.)  Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):

Steve plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

Boys Will Be Boys … Unfortunately

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, but better options are on the horizon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in 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.

                     Steve (Tim Mielants)   rated R    93 min.

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.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

WHAT HAPPENS: We’re in 1996 rural England at Stanton Wood, an institution for troubled teenage boys, although it’s more of a counselling center/school than a “damn jail” (to quote a line from William Holden’s character in Picnic [Joshua Logan, 1955] about his own adolescent experience in a “reform school”) where our focus will be on equally-troubled Steve (Cillian Murphy), a teacher, and one of his most-promising-but-quite-distraught students, Shy (Jay Lycurgo).  All events transpire over one morning to night into the next morning where Steve first discourages Shy to not sneak away outside to puff a joint, then has to deal with ongoing animosity/fighting between Jamie (Luke Ayers) and Riley (Joshua J Parker), soon learns with his co-worker faculty, including Amanda (Tracey Ullman) and counselor Jenny (Emily Watson), that trustees Julian (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) and Charlotte (Ruby Ashbourne-Serkis) have sold the school, to be vacated in a couple of months with no clear indication of what becomes of any of these inhabitants.  To make all this worse, the faculty had previously decided to allow a documentary crew in that day so much of what we see consists of interview footage of the various characters, with the non-doc shots of the ongoing drama having their own documentary feel with lots of actions in the scenes, moving camera, etc.  This continuing chaos takes its toll on Steve, who we learn later was involved in a car accident (not his fault) that’s left him traumatized over the death of a young girl, addicted to the oxycodone pain-killers he needed after the crash and frequent slugs of alcohol, with his tensions taken to a new level when Shy’s mother calls to say she and his stepfather have essentially disowned him, further pushing him away from any help Jenny tries to give.  ⇒All of this culminates at night when Shy goes into a lake clutching a bag of rocks, seemingly for suicide (like Virginia Woolf [Nicole Kidman] in The Hours [Stephen Daldry, 2002]), but then we see him later throwing the rocks at the school windows until he’s tackled by the other boys, so it seems he didn’t drown after all—unless this is some sort of alternate ending.  When dawn comes, Steve goes home to his wife and 2 young daughters, then climbs into his attic with no resolution for us as to what comes next for him.  (Might he is the one who actually dies?)⇐

SO WHAT? As with my last review (The Lost Bus [Paul Greengrass] which also got my 4-stars rating), what happens in Steve works best when viewed rather than just read about, so while I hope you finish what’s posted here I also greatly encourage you to watch this powerful film.  If what's in the plot summary is not yet enough to entice you to Steve here are a couple more encouragements (1) The acting is magnificent throughout from Oscar-winner Murphy (Oppenheimer [Christopher Nolan, 2023]), Oscar-nominee Watson—along with extensive wins and noms in many films—and also well-rewarded Ullman, but also the main young actors who present powerful performances; and (2) For those of you interested in theatre history Steve is a marvelous example of a narrative that follows Aristotle's unities in drama of action, place, and time as found in his Poetics (ca. 335 BC)—well, truthfully, he didn’t talk about time (action should all take place within no more than 24 hours, but later dictates of stage work assumed it from the other 2 [action should be connected to the protagonist, place should be in 1 location]), so in Steve all is ultimately connected to the doings of our primary teacher in the singular location of Stanton Wood, with events occurring from morning of one day into the next morning (time graphics between scenes show us how that day's progressing).  

 

 This is not an easy film to watch given the hostility of some of the boys toward each other and their faculty, with Steve losing control of his own well-being, turning often during this focused day to addictions, with ambiguous events at the end that could imply tragic results even as we hope the final scenes of Shy aren’t as bad as earlier ones imply.  This is truly a slice-of-life drama where we get only hints/abbreviated info about what's led these characters to the miserable states they find themselves in with no indication of what awaits any of them after the school closes.  You’ll find some reasonable questions about what’s next for Steve in this insightful short video (10:10; Spoilers of course), but even there this presentation ends with implications, no real sense of closure, so if such ambiguity is too frustrating, you might want to skip Steve; otherwise, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Steve opened in some domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters on September 9, 2025 (largely for awards-societies requirements of theatrical runs for honors consideration either later this year or next spring) and possibly could still be found in a few of them, the easiest was to see it is through streaming where it’s free to Netflix subscribers ($7.99-$17.99 monthly, depending on ad-free option or not, if you want to explore their extensive holdings beyond this film) which you’ll find in a mixed response from the CCAL to probably do so, as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are at 78%, yet the usual misers at Metacritic offer only a 68% average score.  As I’ve noted frequently in these postings, my 4 stars designation represents the highest I usually go, reserving 4½ and 5 stars for truly remarkable cinematic experiences, so I’m in agreement with those like Peter Debruge of Variety who says: “There’s a sense of dread from the get-go, but these outsiders’ video cameras lend another level of verisimilitude to a ragged, resolutely unsentimental depiction of a dozen or so teens who could, it’s clear, rip one another to shreds. […] Mielants assembles the elements into an intricate postmodern (but still mostly linear) collage, elevating what might have otherwise felt slightly stagy (what with the single location and all) by mixing the various characters’ too-blue-for-TV testimonials with artfully observed private moments.”  But, to be fair to critics who aren’t so enthusiastic, I’ll cite Natalia Winkelman of The New York Times: “But once Steve learns that Stanton Wood trustees plan to shut the school down, the movie takes a turn for the stylish. A droning score sets in, and at one point, the camera soars in and out of a classroom, through the rain and over a muddy soccer game. The sequence impresses, but there is an aloofness to the virtuosity, as if it were designed for a filmmaking reel. […] In hewing closely to Steve, the whole affair takes on a grating note of self-sacrifice, of perseverance through suffering. When, in one scene, the news crew asks Steve to describe himself in three words, he answers with a wan smile, ‘Very, very tired.’ That’s how one feels after finishing this clunky melodrama.” So ... no?

 Yeah, I know, you can’t please everyone, so I’ll leave it to you to decide if what’s been presented here gives you reason to embrace or avoid.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor, this time Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today" (on his self-named 1968 album), a song that’s been recorded by many, from Bette Midler as part of the soundtrack to her starring role in Beaches (Garry Marshall, 1988 [another of her songs from that movie, “Wind Beneath My Wings” won Grammys for Record of the Year, Song of the Year]) to the British raggae band, UB40 to Neil Diamond, Joe Cocker, and Leonard Nimoy, but the version I always liked the best is from the angelic voice of Judy Collins (1966 album In My Life) so I’ll use it here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTSqjUZJm7k&list=RDFTSqjUZJm7k&start_radio=1 where lyrics such as “Lonely, lonely / Tin can at my feet / Think I’ll kick it down the street / That’s the way to treat a friend” “Bright before me the signs implore me/ To help the needy and show them the way / Human kindness is overflowing / And I think it’s going to rain today” link up for me with both Steve’s shortcomings and his higher aspirations, with the later characterizing the impact of the film as well. Steve's full of tough stuff but is surely worth your viewing time if you can tolerate what you’re seeing.

          

SHORT TAKES

           

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list).  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page.  We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us!  Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).

 

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

 

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please 

use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.

          

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

          

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 18,473.  (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.)  Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):