Taglines: Their innocence is her opportunity. Their trust is her weapon. And their destruction, her triumph.
The Hand That Rocks Cradle movie storyline. A doctor is caught molesting a patient and commits suicide, after which his wife has a miscarriage. She blames his victim for her losses and plans to get revenge, infiltrating the unsuspecting woman’s house as a nanny and playing twisted mind games to destroy her life. Thriller, starring Rebecca De Mornay, Annabella Sciorra, Julianne Moore, Matt McCoy and Ernie Hudson.
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a 1992 American psychological thriller film directed by Curtis Hanson, and starring Annabella Sciorra and Rebecca De Mornay. The tale follows a vengeful, psychopathic[1] nanny out to destroy a naive woman and steal her family. The original music score was composed by Graeme Revell.
Cool, Teutonic-looking Rebecca De Mornay plays the nanny from hell, wreaking havoc on the sunny designer family life of Annabella Sciorra and Matt McCoy, in this nerve-racking psychological thriller. Director Curtis Hanson successfully plugs into every deep-seated fear of middle-class parents, with De Mornay doing a neat turn in icy malevolence wrapped up in the guise of responsible carer. This is pure unbridled hokum, of course, but extremely effective until the last 30 minutes, when the plot rapidly self-destructs.
Film Review for The Hand That Rocks Cradle
The title of Curtis Hanson’s “Hand That Rocks the Cradle” evokes memories of Lillian Gish and “Intolerance,” while the movie itself aspires to a tradition of cinema thrills even older than D. W. Griffith’s mad 1916 masterpiece.
“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” is meant to scare audiences more or less in the way that the patrons of the early nickelodeons were frightened when they saw the image of a train rushing at them. Audiences aren’t asked to think, only to react. “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” proves again that not thinking isn’t especially easy even today.
The new film is about the awful things that happen to the members of the young, upwardly mobile Bartel family when they employ the sweet, extremely blond, ravishingly beautiful Peyton Flanders (Rebecca De Mornay) as a live-in nanny for Emma (Madeline Zima), their 5-year-old daughter, and new baby boy.
Michael Bartel (Matt McCoy) is a genetic engineer. His wife, Claire (Annabella Sciorra), has such a passion for botany that she is building a full-size greenhouse in their Seattle backyard, which is why she needs a nurse for the children. What Claire and Michael fail to do is check Peyton’s references.
Claire and Michael may be up on interior decoration and which French restaurant is favored this week, but they are seriously stupid in all other matters. Right from the start the audience knows (and Claire and Michael don’t) that Peyton is the deranged widow of Claire’s gynecologist, who committed suicide after Claire reported him for doing unprofessional things with his fingers during a physical exam. Poor Peyton, who was herself pregnant when her husband blew his brains out, went on to have an emergency hysterectomy and to lose her sanity.
Peyton wants a family even if it isn’t hers. She may be bonkers, but she is clever. She lures the baby away from Claire by breast-feeding him on the sly. She allows little Emma to stay up late watching horror films. When the handyman, Solomon (Ernie Hudson), catches her nursing the baby, she plants a pair of Emma’s panties in his toolbox, thus to convince Claire that Solomon is a potential child molester.
Though Mr. Hanson (“Bad Influence,” “The Bedroom Window”) is a slick movie maker, he is not an especially persuasive one here. Don’t be gulled by those who would compare “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” to “Fatal Attraction,” which features three strong characters who, in one way or another, are ready to answer for their actions.
Both Ms. Sciorra and Ms. De Mornay are able actresses, but their roles, as written in Amanda Silver’s screenplay, are conventions of the genre, while Mr. McCoy’s Michael Bartel must be the nerd of the year. Also hilariously prissy.
Says Michael when the glowy and wet-lipped nanny makes a play for him, “Peyton, there’s only one woman for me,” a line that prompts unkind howls from the audience. Not even in “Thelma and Louise” are men so maligned, though, in “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” it seems to be less a social comment than an accident of the plot and the casting.
Particularly nasty is the movie’s treatment of Solomon, the retarded handyman who is devoted to the Bartel family. Because he is played by the only black actor in the cast, Solomon comes across as yet another yuppie trend-setting breakthrough: a yard slave for the 1990’s.
Mr. Hanson creates the occasionally effective shock effect to satisfy those who want to squeal in mock fright. More often the devices he uses are such tired tricks as the crosscutting between two sets of simultaneous, often innocent, actions to create the illusion of suspense that can’t be sustained.
The movie looks as pretty as an upscale magazine layout and has one well-written supporting role, that of Marlene, a high-powered real estate agent who talks in cliches she coins herself. As played by Julianne Moore, Marlene is funny, bright and intentionally brings down the house when she advises Claire, “Never let an attractive woman occupy a power position in your home.”
The Hand That Rocks Cradle (1992)
Directed by: Curtis Hanson
Starring: Annabella Sciorra, Rebecca De Mornay, Matt McCoy, Ernie Hudson, Julianne Moore, Madeline Zima, John de Lancie, Kevin Skousen, Justin Zaremby, Jennifer Melander, Ashley Melander
Screenplay by: Amanda Silver
Production Design by: Edward Pisoni
Cinematography by: Robert Elswit
Film Editing by: John F. Link
Costume Design by: Jennifer von Mayrhauser
Set Decoration by: Sandy Reynolds-Wasco
Art Direction by: Mark Zuelzke
Music by: Graeme Revell
MPAA Rating: R for terror, violence, a scene of sexual molestation, and for language.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: January 10, 1992
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