In tailoring the 1992 classic The Hand that Rocks the Cradle for this year’s Halloween movie lineup, Michelle Garza Cervera makes a different movie altogether. Whether it’s better is less convincing.

Review
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
Disney+
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Building a Halloween spooky film watchlist this year feels like standing on a crossroad: on one side lies the rising movement of so-called elevated horror helmed by Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and Oz Perkins, characterised by arthouse-reminiscent cinematography and frights themed around human nature rather than ghosts.

On the other hand, campy horror is clawing its way back from the grave, resurrected from what many thought would be a quiet death from old age. For my sharehouse of queer university students who long for gritty sexual tension to feed into the gore, the crossroad further frays.

Debuting on Disney+ on October 22, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, directed by Michelle Garza Cervera, meets us where the three roads join — just in time for Halloween.

The remake stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as attorney Caitlyn and Maika Monroe as nanny PollySupplied: Disney

The new film is a glossy remake of the 1992 hit thriller of the same name that centres on a nanny infiltrating a fragile household. It’s an ever-relevant suburban nightmare, but Cervera pushes its relevance further, switching out the unassuming housewife Claire Bartel for steely attorney Caitlyn Morales (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Added to the mix is Maika Monroe — fresh out of Longlegs (2024) fame — as troubled nanny Polly.

While the motives of Rebecca De Mornay’s nanny Peyton were made clear from the start of the original film, Polly hides her background until the very end. It's a choice that makes Monroe’s portrayal less a manipulative mastermind, more an erratic teen.

The tension doesn’t come from the threatening dread of what she might do to the unassuming family, but the frustrating mystery of why she is doing them at all.

Further robbing the film of the original’s emotional core, Caitlyn’s family is fractured from the start. Her marriage is brittle, and she struggles to connect with her kids. The 1992 film’s terror came from watching a wholesome family unravel. Here, there’s barely a family left to destroy.

The reasons for nanny Polly's actions aren't clear until the end of the film. Supplied: Disney

Instead, Monroe and Winstead deliver a convincing and sensual flirtation with queerness, though it’s a flirtation that feels, at times, unserious. When Polly comes out to Caitlyn and the latter reveals that she, too, was in a relationship with a woman before building her family, it becomes the final key that secures Polly’s infiltration.

The highlight of this exploration is a sex scene that only exists to further prove Polly’s vindictiveness — drawing a collective sigh out of my queer household.

Of all the things they could have borrowed from the 1990s, it had to be the old trope of queerness equalling malice.

The homoerotic relationship also sacrifices the depth of the story beyond our main protagonists. The 1992’s film most layered performances were arguably delivered by characters cut from this version, such as the family's helper Solomon, wonderfully portrayed by Ernie Hudson.

Mileiah Vega's portrayal of daughter Emma Morales is one of the highlights of the film.Supplied: Disney

But a satisfying trade-off comes in Mileiah Vega’s portrayal of Caitlyn’s daughter Emma Morales. Her performance elevates the stock character of a victim’s naïve daughter into a spunky tween who refuses to be played by the adults’ game around her.

For all the messiness of this remake’s suburban drama, there’s a strange charm in its presentation. Composer Ariel Marx’s score — a wheezing, claustrophobic composition that sounds like being locked in a box with the sole companion of a buzzing fly — keeps the tension taut even when the script falters. Visually, the film screams quality cinema: every surface polished, every mirror ready to crack.

The film walks the line between camp and elevated horror.Supplied: Disney

Cervera’s film isn’t really a remake so much as a remix. It borrows the title and the creepy nanny plot point, then rocks an entirely different cradle. One that switches out housewife struggles with buried queer desire and a self-conscious awareness that its modernising of the source material results in another story completely. For example, the opening scene of a large house fire starkly contrasts with the original film’s suburban mundanity, as if literally burning any audience expectations shaped by the original.

In a year where horror lies in the extremes of elevated or camp, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle dares to be both.

Cervera clearly knows how to craft unease, but the shocks in the film are so laughably grotesque, they border on parody. It’s hard to know whether to gasp or giggle — but maybe that’s the point. It’s camp disguised as big budget, a thriller that wants to be taken seriously but is most entertaining when it’s not. Its addition of a queer storyline is messy, but what modern queer exploration is not?

For this reason, my household was glued to the screen as this film played headliner in our film night and, even without the spookiness of Halloween, you'll likely find yourself doing the same.

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