Metacritic-Rezensionen

A unexpected pleasure to watch, disturbing for new parents, slightly silly but ever so enjoyable.

Helmer has obtained taut, impressive performances, notably from cast women.

This jovially sinister, middle-class morality tale-cum-horror show is predictable, implausible and fiendishly entertaining.

Ynpretentious and efficient, Curtis Hanson`s suspense drama The Hand That Rocks the Cradle suggests, after the monstrous ego trips of this past holiday season, that some sense of professionalism continues to reside in Hollywood.

But the film isn’t just a well-made TV-style thriller either. It’s on to something--the way upwardly mobile parents, hoping to make their lives more professionally fulfilling, unwittingly bring the danger of the unknown into their lives.

There’s no denying the movie gets a rise out of us, but it does so by mining the fears within our hokiest prejudices.

De Mornay is oddly compelling as Mott. There’s a gleeful joy in watching her slow, insidious progress, and it’s hard not to secretly root for her character.

This thriller is so completely worked out that it might have been devised by paranoids. Not even the most demented Kennedy-assassination buff could be more thorough about making sure that everything fits with everything else.

This anti-feminist parable is both a labor and a pain.

Though Mr. Hanson ("Bad Influence," "The Bedroom Window") is a slick movie maker, he is not an especially persuasive one here.