Dang it. I wasn’t clamoring for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle updates, but pairing the cool scream queen of the moment with one of the criminally underrated actresses working today had me hella intrigued. But for a story about being daring and taking chances, this 2025 update plays it too safe when it needed to up the ante. Safe on Halloween? I know what Homer would say…
We’ve moved from Seattle in 1992 to 2025 Los Angeles. Attorney Caitlyn Morales (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) meets Polly Murphy (Maika Monroe) when Polly needs help with a landlord dispute. Fast forward a year or 2 later, Caitlyn is exhausted, caring for her two kids Emma (Mileiah Vega) and Josie (Nora & Lola Contreras) and lawyering, stretched too thin. She locks eyes with Polly, remembering she has a background as a nanny. After background checking her, Caitlyn hires Polly to babysit the kids to free up time for her and husband Miguel (Raul Castillo). And what could possibly go wrong with a hot young nanny with a death stare in a home with a high strung mother and inept sex starved husband?
But Director Michelle Garza Cervera knows the traps of a thriller like this. She slows down the movie, and ratches up the tension subtly and slowly, weaponizing her two leads. Maika Monroe and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are both overqualified for this script, but make the most of the slow burn with great performances. Monroe gets a chance to go for more sinister and unfeeling, showing the audience she isn’t on the level but hiding her true feelings until she absolutely has to, keeping us guessing as much as possible. But this time it’s mommy Caitlyn that’s the most fascinating character thanks to Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This is one of the great emotionally suppressed characters I’ve seen in a while, as Winstead plays her constantly at war with her feelings on the surface until she can’t fight that assuredness underneath letting it’s force take over.
I just wish the 2025 update was up to the acting performances. The beginning is promising, the shift to Los Angeles muddies the waters at first, since Caitlyn appears the more unbalanced one compared to the even keeled Polly. There’s more sexual and helicopter parent undercurrents that could have really taken a bold storytelling swing. But the movie telegraphs its intentions early and often, betraying any of that mystery, leaving those great performances in its wake. Bold is replaced by perfunctory, as you can start seeing the steps the movie is going to take sucking the life out of the movie. You can tell the movie has no courage of its convictions by the ending; without spoiling, it stops its best strength to go for what it thinks is fan service, but really is a betrayal, and not the fun movie kind.
Good try I guess? At least Maika Monroe and Mary Elizabeth Winstead come out unscathed here. Monroe’s gonna keep being the hipster horror princess a while longer, but can we start building more movie vehicles around Winstead? All she does is be great in everything, isn’t that enough? She can rock my cradle any day of the week.