Studio:   Hulu
Director: Michelle Garza Cervera
Writer:   Micah Bloomberg
Producer: Michael Schaefer, Mike Larocca, Ted Field
Stars:    Maika Monroe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Raul Castillo, Martin Starr, Mileiah Vega, Riki Lindhome, Shannon Cochran

Review Score:

Summary:

A mother’s mind gradually unravels as she comes to suspect her new nanny, who hides a tragic past, is manipulating her family.

Synopsis:

Pregnant lawyer Caitlin Morales briefly meets supposed nanny Polly Murphy, who struggles with poverty, during a tenants’ rights program sponsored by Caitlin’s law firm. Shortly after their interaction, Caitlin goes into labor. Caitlin gives birth to a baby girl, Josie, that she and her husband Miguel go on to raise alongside their other daughter Emma.

Months later, Caitlin runs into Polly at a farmer’s market. Seeing how Caitlin has her hands full with two children, Polly again mentions her supposed background in childcare. After speaking over the phone to Rosanna, a reference who vouches for Polly, Caitlin hires Polly as a part-time nanny.

In addition to acting provocatively around Miguel, Polly stokes an unspoken attraction Caitlin, who dated a woman before marrying Miguel, seemingly has toward Polly. Polly also begins manipulating her growing bond with Emma by sharing stories about her life in foster care and sneaking sweets to Emma and Josie despite Caitlin insisting her daughters cannot eat sugar.

Caitlin and Miguel host a dinner for Caitlin’s longtime friend and fellow lawyer Stewart and Stewart’s girlfriend Bethany. Unaware that Polly secretly poisoned the meal, everyone gets so sick from the food that Josie has to be taken to the hospital.

Worried that Polly might leave Los Angeles because she cannot afford her rent, Caitlin has Polly move into the house. Polly continues working there for several months, although Caitlin starts growing concerned about Polly’s behavior when she discovers Polly fed formula to the baby instead of breastmilk and briefly flashes a hateful temper.

Caitlin comes home from a run to find Miguel entertaining Polly and her girlfriend Amelia around a firepit outside. Later, Caitlin spies on Polly having intense sex with Amelia. Polly catches Caitlin watching, but the moment later inspires Caitlin to have similar sex with her husband.

Because Polly secretly replaced her antidepressant medication with an ADHD stimulant, Caitlin’s behavior becomes jittery and erratic. Miguel openly worries Caitlin is becoming mentally unstable like she had been before treatment.

Influenced by Polly, Emma tells her parents she wants to marry a woman instead of a man when she is older, which causes an argument among the family. Caitlin privately tells her husband she believes Polly is deliberately planting ideas in their daughter’s head. Miguel suggests Caitlin is merely jealous of how much time Polly spends alone with Emma.

Following a New Year’s Eve celebration, Emma sets off fireworks inside the house, creating a brief panic. Polly admits she gave the fireworks to the girl. Caitlin accuses Polly of doing so because she knew it would create danger, but Miguel dismisses it as an accident. Incensed, Caitlin kicks Polly out of the house.

Miguel tells Caitlin he believes she is struggling with mental illness again and vaguely threatens that her irrational behavior needs to improve. Caitlin tracks Polly to a sketchy motel, apologizes, and welcomes her back to the house.

Caitlin privately reveals her suspicions about Polly to Stewart, who steals a saliva sample and tampon from Polly’s trash to perform a background check via DNA. Stewart discovers Polly’s real name is Rebecca and she was the sole survivor of a housefire that killed her parents and younger sister, which is how she ended up in foster care. Stewart also learns the fire was set by Caitlin when she was an abused child named Jennifer, who later changed her name to escape her tragic past.

Caitlin tracks down Polly’s reference, Rosanna. Caitlin learns Polly and Rosanna met at a rehab meeting. Caitlin then publicly berates Rosanna upon discovering Polly never actually nannied for her, and Rosanna only vouched for Polly because she took pity on her for being a drug addict struggling with a troubled background. Caitlin returns home to tell her husband that Rosanna lied, but Miguel again dismisses her concerns.

Stewart summons Polly to his place to confront her with his discoveries. Stewart tells Polly he is sympathetic about what happened to her, but he also says taking revenge against Caitlin by manipulating her family is wrong. Polly ends up viciously beating Stewart with a baseball bat.

A frantic phone call from Stewart’s girlfriend Bethany brings Polly to the hospital. Stewart dies from his injuries. Caitlin tries telling Bethany as well as a police officer that Polly assaulted Stewart, but neither of them listen to her claim.

Caitlin returns home demanding that Polly leave the house. A physical struggle occurs between Caitlin and Polly, during which Caitlin inadvertently strikes Emma in her face. Believing she suffered a breakdown, Caitlin is forced to move out under threat of Miguel filing a restraining order for endangering their kids.

After discovering that Polly tampered with her medication, Caitlin attends Emma’s soccer game to apologize with Miguel’s supervision. Upon reconciling, Emma shows her mother the newspaper article about the housefire, which Stewart had printed, and Emma found in Polly’s trash.

Caitlin immediately rushes home to confront Polly. Concerned after noticing she suddenly disappeared from the soccer game, Miguel collects Emma and races after his wife.

Caitlin explains she set the housefire because Polly’s father had been abusing her, but nobody believed her. Blaming Caitlin for having to live an impoverished life in foster homes, Polly accuses Caitlin of lying. Caitlin counters that Polly knows she is telling the truth because Polly’s father also abused Polly, even grotesquely commenting that she and Caitlin looked alike and could have passed for sisters.

In denial, an enraged Polly breaks a glass and uses a shard to stab Caitlin in her stomach. Polly threatens to replace Caitlin and take control of her family. A violent struggle ensues between both women.

Caitlin eventually retrieves Josie and escapes to her vehicle in the driveway. Caitlin begins backing out as Polly jumps on the hood to repeatedly hammer the windshield, which Miguel and Emma arrive in time to witness. A passing car sideswipes the vehicle. Caitlin and her baby survive the collision, but Polly is launched into the ground and dies gruesomely.

Miguel apologizes for not believing his wife. Caitlin cries over Polly’s mangled body. Life returns to relative normalcy for the family, although Emma is later seen mimicking Polly’s worrisome mannerisms while privately interacting with Josie.

Review:

While the issue of whether or not a particular movie should even be remade at all can be a separate debate, sometimes it’s at least easy to see why someone felt a film was due for an update. The black-and-white “King Kong” from 1933 remains an undeniable classic, but it was over 70 years old when Peter Jackson thought it was time for a second refresh with cutting-edge digital effects. Fans of foreign films can bemoan Americanized versions of thrillers like “Let the Right One In” and “Martyrs” (review here) all they want, yet the reality is many viewers still have aversions to subtitles, so there’s some sense behind remaking those movies in English to reach wider audiences.

Why anyone thought “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” needed modernization is more challenging to figure out. Even three decades later, director Curtis Hanson’s 1992 original doesn’t seem all that dated. It’s certainly not inaccessible, as it’s regularly available for free on TV, and Amazon can put a physical disc in a U.S. mailbox tomorrow for under $8. Maybe someone assumed Rebecca De Mornay isn’t the draw now that she was then, so they decided to contemporize the actress by having Maika Monroe fill her role.

Whatever the reason, here’s Hulu’s 2025 take on the tale. Broad swaths of the story stay the same, though drilled-down details see some shifts. Monroe plays Polly, a mentally unstable woman pretending to be a nanny in order to manipulate the family of Caitlin, a workaholic mother played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Polly hides a different secret than De Mornay did for plotting an elaborate revenge scheme that involves psychological head games and turning a child against her mom. In keeping with current times, the hands rocking this cradle are also a lot less white than they were before, with Caitlin’s Mexican husband Miguel making for a bilingual family and Polly’s sexuality introducing an element of same-sex attraction.

Taking Polly’s supposed profession to heart, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” does a lot of unnecessary nannying of its own, holding the viewer’s hand through every single second as though they’ve never seen a motion picture before. Try not to take it too personally that the movie thinks you’re stupid. It assumes everyone watching must be a dimwit too dense to understand how the most basic storytelling concepts work.

You’ve heard of Chekhov’s gun. Brace yourself for Chekhov’s stop sign. Only five minutes into the movie, Caitlin has a confrontation with a Karen whose speeding car nearly clips a stroller that rolled into the street. Caitlin immediately tells her husband, “There should be a stop sign there,” then repeats her declaration a second time. A few more minutes pass when Caitlin stops her car on a different day to examine a stop sign that’s been bent into the bushes and nearly gets herself clipped by a passing minivan. Sometime after that, she mentions a community meeting about installing a stop sign, followed by another moment where she and a friend watch a construction crew bolt it into the ground. The only question now is which character is going to be killed by someone ignoring this stop sign the film spends five scenes establishing?

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” does this again with Caitlin’s antidepressant medication. A closeup on the venlafaxine label after Caitlin sets down her pill bottle is conspicuous enough. Then there’s a second cutaway to the bottle later, except this time the camera includes Polly’s face reflected in a makeup mirror to show her eyeing the pills suspiciously. For those who still aren’t certain if Polly plans to mess with the meds, fear not. There’s also a shot of Polly filing down replacement pills for a third hit over the head about what’s obviously happening with Caitlin’s prescription.

The ridiculous ways in which “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” manages its plot progression are beyond infuriating. The passage of time gets depicted with brightly lit, literally, visual cues. See the twinkling tree behind the dinner table? It’s Christmastime. Fireworks overhead and New Year’s Eve tiaras? The calendar just flipped to next year.

Thanks to digging into the nanny’s trash and doing some DNA testing, Caitlin’s close friend and fellow lawyer Stewart becomes the first person to find out who Polly really is and why she chose to target Caitlin. Instead of instantly contacting Caitlin with a dire warning, he just leaves her a voicemail that cryptically says, “I think we should talk.” From that dumb action, it’s crystal clear he’s going to encounter trouble before having a chance to present the evidence he collected. Caitlin will of course never hear his message until it’s too late, even though the movie shows her using her phone in the meantime. Never mind that she’s the one who sent Stewart on his fact-finding mission, meaning she should be anxiously awaiting his discoveries.

Characterizations are textbook stereotypes. Although she’s playing a typical gaslighting victim whose mind gradually unravels, Mary Elizabeth Winstead fares best with a comparatively juicy role giving her more than one note to hit. Maika Monroe, on the other hand, embodies the villain in the most vanilla way possible by merely getting a dead stare in her eyes every time she’s up to something sinister. It’s comical how the movie presents her as impoverished by having her pull up to the house in a noisy, dirt-caked old car that’s also dented on all sides and has a sideview mirror attached with duct tape.

Even more cartoonish in depiction, Caitlin’s husband Miguel represents the epitome of the disbelieving husband trope. Every incident where Caitlin senses something peculiar about Polly is another opportunity for him to tell his wife she’s being irrational or imagining things. One of his most maddening moments, and there are a dozen to choose from, comes when the couple’s young daughter, Emma, lights fireworks inside the house, nearly setting the girl’s bedroom ablaze and putting her in a direct line with extreme danger. Polly apologizes for giving Emma the fireworks, something objectively idiotic, causing an incensed Caitlin to demand Polly leave immediately. Miguel contends it was only an accident, Polly just wanted Emma to have unsupervised “fun” with something flammable, and Caitlin needs to get a grip on acting rash.

Soon after that, Caitlin tracks down the person Polly put down when she weaseled her way into a nanny job, and Caitlin learns her reference lied about Polly’s work experience because she felt a recovering drug addict needed a sympathetic break. Apparently unconcerned about having someone who is ostensibly a stranger being alone with his two children, Miguel is more troubled that Caitlin confronted this other woman and would dare to impugn Polly.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” is so unbelievably infantilizing with its audience, it’s insulting. Winstead’s moderately intriguing portrayal of a spiraling breakdown gets diminished in service of a predictable story rewritten for simpletons. Maybe “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” shouldn’t have been remade in the first place. But maybe another try in a few years’ time might be warranted just to completely wipe this version from relevancy.

Review Score: 45

Nov 26, 2025

BONE LAKE (2024)

“Bone Lake” comes across as a genuinely committed attempt to craft a slick little film streaked with some slaughter and a slight touch of self-aware silliness.