DON'T TRUST ANYONE: THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, POISON IVY, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, UNLAWFUL ENTRY
In reviewing the remake of CAPE FEAR, then New Yorker critic Terrence Rafferty called most thrillers reactionary, and at no time was that more true than in 1992. Curtis Hanson's THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, Katt Shea Rubin's POISON IVY, Barbet Schroeder's SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, and Jonathan Kaplan's UNLAWFUL ENTRY all were about outsiders threatening either a family, or in the case of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, a marriage. All of them also chose the route of saying that you couldn't trust an outsider, be it a nanny (CRADLE), a poor person(POISON IVY), or a roommate (FEMALE) (UNLAWFUL ENTRY distinguished itself by saying you couldn't trust a cop). Whereas in CAPE FEAR, the family had real people with honest temptations to deal with, the families in these movies are sanctified as the nuclear family that no outsider can violate. Oh, one other thing distinguishes these movies; they were all exploitative and bad.
Hanson's movie at least sets up an empathetic situation before it goes downhill. Claire (Annabella Sciorra), who's married with one daughter and a baby on the way, goes to see a gynecologist, Dr. Mott (John de Lancie), who was recommended to her. Except he molests her, and she files charges. When several other women do so as well, the doctor kills himself. His wife, Peyton (Rebecca DeMornay), is so distraught she has a miscarriage, and blames it on Claire. Months later, Claire, who's had the baby, decides to go back to work and decides to hire a nanny. Naturally, Peyton decides to grab the position, and while she at first seems great, getting along with the children like a house on fire, she of course is planning revenge.
From the point Peyton arrives at Claire's house, that's when the movie goes off the rails. Hanson showed himself to be a fine director of suspense movies with THE BEDROOM WINDOW and BAD INFLUENCE, but he can't do much with a script that telegraphs itself every step of the way. Can you guess that Peyton will try to seduce Claire's husband (Matt McCoy)? Can you guess that because she gets suspicious, Claire's best friend Marlene (Julianne Moore) will meet an untimely end? Also, while I am normally not a member of the logic police in a movie, it seems that Peyton gets the nanny job a little too easily. And the dialogue is ripe with dementia (Peyton to Claire: "When your husband makes love to you, it's my face he sees"). Mostly, though, it seems like the script wants to punish Claire for wanting to have a job (tending her greenhouse) and being away from her duties as a mother. Because, as you know, you can't trust nannies, and anyone who trusts a stranger to their kids rather than themselves needs to be punished.
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