With a near-total reimagining of its source material, Michelle Garza Cervera’s “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” superimposes contemporary political themes onto Curtis Hanson’s original 1992 domestic thriller, about a strange nanny invading the sanctity of the American home. The remake, streaming directly on Hulu, upends the structure of Amanda Silver’s original screenplay, introducing a mysterious element to its antagonist’s motivations and imbuing the strange saga with sensibilities that threaten to blossom into deliciously sinister camp. Unfortunately, the piece ends up being marred by a climax that runs out of steam by taking itself too seriously, but the whole film is still worth watching for its central performances.
Written by Micah Bloomberg, the 2025 version opens with a heartbreaking flashback of a young blonde girl watching a house fire ravage a family, before the film cuts to two modern-day blonde adults, drawing attention between them but obscuring the exact connection between past and present. Unlike the original, whose inciting incident took place during the story’s telling, Garza Cervera’s version plants the seeds of a much deeper connection between desperate au pair Polly (Maika Monroe) and the pregnant corporate lawyer whose pro bono help she seeks for a dispute with a landlord, Caitlyn Morales (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Polly, who drops hints of her past work raising children, harbors an uncomfortable, subdued melancholy beneath her sympathetic demeanor, which alerts viewers to the fact that her intentions may not be what they seem.
A few months later, after Caitlyn gives birth to her second child, a seemingly chance encounter at a farmers’ market leads her to hire Polly as a nanny. Polly is tasked with caring for Caitlyn’s new baby Josie and ten-year-old daughter Emma (Mileiah Vega), while her husband Miguel (Raúl Castillo) is distracted by various meetings. Polly seems like the perfect fit, firmly on the same page as Caitlyn when it comes to her distinctly modern parenting idiosyncrasies regarding trans fats and the like. In fact, she’s too good to be true – a fantasy that slowly unravels in a way that makes Caitlyn question her sanity.
As in Hanson’s original, the camera keeps us privy to the various methods by which Polly subtly illuminates Caitlyn, exerting increasing control as she navigates her way through her life (and her sleek modernist home) while gaining the trust of Emma and Miguel. The major difference, however, is that the “why” of it all is something we have to discover alongside Caitlyn, as well as her best friend Stewart (Martin Starr) who tries to protect her.
This simmering plot is made all the more magnetic by a whole new queer subtext. On the one hand, Polly tries to catch Caitlyn’s eye, making her wonder if she’s happy in her heterosexual marriage; both women have come out of the closet, but the target in turn becomes Caitlyn’s relatively traditional domestic life. On the other hand, and alongside the aforementioned advances, Polly also leads Caitlyn to believe that she might be having inappropriate conversations – or something more sinister – with her eldest daughter, who boldly expresses budding questions about her gender and sexuality, thereby inducing conservative fears of LGBTQ predation (an equally conservative fear of black men as predators was a key point in the original). This makes for a hugely appealing and distinctly charged return to the original story, and helps induce more subtle horrors for Caitlyn; she must interpret things, rather than discover them, which causes her to fall into a gray zone of uncertainty.
Winstead’s overly cautious mother struggles to maintain the lavish facade she and her husband have created – which plays on the theme of how wealth protects people, granting destitute Polly an empathetic class position before we even know her story. Until then, Monroe carries her character with a festering sadness, which makes Polly all the more interesting to watch as she subtly manipulates Caitlyn from the shadows.
Additionally, it must be said that Vega does a remarkable job as a bitter teenager who isn’t getting the attention she wants (or needs) from her mother at a time in her life when she needs it the most. It’s a performance that might bring to mind a young Jenna Ortega. The cast is phenomenal, and Garza Cervera (thanks to Jo Willems’ focused cinematography) captures them through refractions and reflections through the glass exteriors of the set, making them feel disconcerted in the service of creating psychological tension and a suitably dark atmosphere.
With all these pieces in play, the result should be a sure-fire hit, but there’s also a hesitation toward “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” that keeps it from going all-out. The fears he plays with are ultimately brought to light in the form of huge revelations expressed not through action, but through literal, loud dialogue. Although Winstead and Monroe are immensely capable of making exposition intriguing, the nature of the film’s final act lets the air escape at least a little (despite plenty of bloodshed), leading to a conclusion that stalls as soon as things start to escalate. It’s a fantasy construct without much means of release – whether delightful or cathartic – which can’t help but indicate a creative hesitation.
The film’s various social themes are serious or important, or insert your own buzzy label here. But for the most part, they fuel pulpy melodrama about “a woman gone mad” (i.e. a woman made to question her sanity). This premise certainly treads a backward line, but it ends up being pulled back from the brink – not through thoughtful subversion or unique formalism from a more enlightened perspective, but rather by putting on the brakes and explaining the more unpleasant aspects of the story with words. This is the morally correct view of the vicious immoralities revealed by history. But damn, the film’s final act just isn’t fun to watch, despite its promising operatic delights.
