by Hudson Moura
Michelle Garza Cervera’s reworking of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle aims to refit the early-’90s domestic thriller to contemporary anxieties—postpartum fragility, queer desire, gig-economy care—but the result is a schematic, frequently incoherent exercise that mistakes insinuation for tension. Caitlyn (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a sleepless new mother juggling a newborn and a young daughter, hires Polly (Maika Monroe), a babysitter whose presence slides from convenient to corrosive. Their rapport is framed as ambiguously seductive.
Moment to moment, the film survives on contrivance. Polly’s early boundary-tests—slipping the kids sugar against explicit rules, “accidentally” making everyone sick—are signposted as red flags, but they register as elbow-jabs rather than escalation. A poison-plot thread (tampering with Caitlyn’s medication and food) staggers forward without procedural logic; the husband, Miguel (Raúl Castillo), is written as conveniently oblivious, impervious to both the women’s dynamic and to Caitlyn’s postpartum distress. Crucial beats are advanced through half-uttered hints and withheld information that reads less like mystery than like a script terrified of specificity. The engine here is not psychology but miscommunication: characters refuse to speak plainly so the film can keep moving.
Performance cannot compensate for the thinness. Winstead remains rigid in a reactive, panic or impulsive approach. Her character’s choices too often collapse into “movie behavior.” Monroe is miscast for the design at hand: Polly needs to be disarmingly charming—someone who could plausibly be invited deeper into the family’s space—yet the performance skews affectless and wounded, projecting need more than guile. The seduction-threat oscillation never gels; we are told to fear manipulation that the film fails to embody.
Formally, the package is similarly blunt. The visual grammar offers clean but unexpressive coverage; sound and score underline menace without adding subtext; production design does little to externalize Caitlyn’s postpartum headspace beyond generic disarray.
Most disappointing is the film’s handling of its richest thematic vein. Postpartum vulnerability could have anchored a textured inquiry into care, dependency, and the politics of domestic labor; instead, the narrative leans on stigmatizing insinuation—“Caitlyn is pretending to be someone she’s not,” Polly taunts—invoking a secret that never coherently materializes. The film repeatedly flirts with the equation instability = danger, while treating queer desire as atmospheric garnish rather than a structuring force. By contrast, the 1992 touchstone with Annabella Sciorra and Rebecca De Mornay (her breakout as the nanny) was more nuanced and frankly sensual—and it knew exactly what its monster wanted. Here, agency is diffused across unspoken hints the script refuses to articulate, leaving motive, method, and meaning undercooked.ng undercooked.
A domestic thriller assembled from half-signals and contrivances—more suggestive than suspenseful—and ethically careless where it most needs clarity. Not even committed leads can rescue a script that withholds the very stakes it gestures toward. A suggestion: avoid the two final scenes. A late attempt at shock—the penultimate scene’s bloodletting in front of a small child—is, frankly, in poor taste: less earned horror than a dare to the audience. The final grace note involving Emma aims for disturbing ambiguity but lands as an illogical coda. 
1.5/5