Rebecca De Mornay’s uneven film career can be charted between two landmark roles. The first came in Risky Business (1983), where she played Lana, a sex worker who seduces a high-schooler named Joel (Tom Cruise, in his breakout role) and initiates him not just into sex, but into capitalist entrepreneurship via amateur pimping. Her other iconic role was in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), a psychological thriller in which she portrayed the vengeful wife of a gynecologist who dies by suicide after a patient accuses him of sexual assault. De Mornay’s character loses both her unborn baby late in pregnancy and her luxurious home, then infiltrates the family of the woman she blames, bent on destroying it from within.
The film’s success was credited to director Curtis Hanson, screenwriter Amanda Silver (who would go on to co-write Avatar sequels), and most notably De Mornay herself, who crafted the character of Peyton Flanders into a beautiful, cold and ruthless psychopath. It was an entertainingly exaggerated creation — part spiritual sister to Alex Forrest (Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, 1987) and Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, 1992).
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle trailer
(Video: Courtesy of Disney)
The decision by 20th Century Studios (now under Disney ownership) and Hulu to produce a new version of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle cannot be justified if it’s merely a replica of the original. To their credit, director Michelle Garza Cervera and screenwriter Micah Bloomberg share only the core premise: a woman infiltrating a family to exact revenge on the mother.
Cervera, a Mexican filmmaker, is best known for her 2022 debut Huesera: The Bone Woman, a Mexican-Peruvian body-horror thriller that earned critical acclaim. That film followed a woman experiencing disturbing visions during her first pregnancy — of a female figure with no eyes or mouth. Strange occurrences lead others to suspect she's mentally unraveling. Meanwhile, the return of a past same-sex partner challenges her normative identity as a wife and soon-to-be mother. By the end, the protagonist embraces her identity as a witch-like figure and leaves her newborn daughter in the care of her husband.
The new Hand That Rocks the Cradle shares intriguing thematic parallels with Huesera, but swaps horror and mysticism for a more conventional domestic thriller. Without revealing spoilers, it’s clear that the shift in genre — and perhaps the constraints of a corporate, mainstream American production — result in a very different and far less compelling take on similar ideas. While the remake avoids being a direct copy, its mere divergence from the original doesn’t make it meaningful or necessary.
The film opens with the image of a young girl standing before a burning house. Like the famous Disaster Girl meme, it suggests we’ve just witnessed the seed of future destruction. From there, the story jumps to a professional encounter between attorney Caitlin Morales (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Polly Murphy (played by Maika Monroe, the current “scream queen” of indie horror). Caitlin provides pro bono legal aid to low-income clients facing housing-related legal issues. Despite being heavily pregnant, she continues working — a choice that prompts Polly to question why she isn't at home. The two share a warm, easy chemistry.
A few months later, we see Caitlin in a different role — as a mother to her newborn daughter and to Emma (Mileiah Vega), her tween daughter on the cusp of adolescence. Her husband, Miguel (Raúl Castillo), is an architect who does the bare minimum of domestic duties, leaving Caitlin overwhelmed. His character is largely passive; when he isn’t indifferent, he’s disappointed in his wife. Caitlin is seen taking Viapax — an anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication — and it's implied that beneath her professional exterior lies a history of mental health struggles that may be resurfacing. Though the Morales family enjoys material comfort, Caitlin is clearly in distress.
That distress provides the opening Polly needs to insert herself into the family's life. Even without familiarity with the 1992 film, the narrative direction is easy to predict. The film doesn't need a detailed plot breakdown to note that director Michelle Garza Cervera and screenwriter Micah Bloomberg opt for a slow build of menace. One notable layer that ties this version to Cervera’s previous work (Huesera) is the revelation that Caitlin had a past relationship with a woman before marrying Miguel. Polly, by contrast, is openly lesbian, and part of her disruption of the family dynamic involves awakening Caitlin’s repressed desires.
The plot doesn’t offer many surprises, even when it tries to. Cervera’s direction here is unremarkable, and the film suffers from an overload of grating characters — the uptight mom who panics over slight dietary deviations for her daughters, the personality-free husband and the jaded tween who seems to believe life might be better without children.
Maika Monroe provides the film’s few compelling moments, particularly in scenes where tight close-ups allow viewers to sense the unease simmering beneath her calm exterior. She’s the one reason to consider watching — but even then, it’s probably not worth your time.