The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (Curtis Hanson, 1992)

With: Rebecca De Mornay, Annabella Sciorra, Matt McCoy, Ernie Hudson, Julianne Moore

Plot: An expectant mother (Sciorra) is molested by her gynaecologist, who kills himself in the resulting investigation. His wife (De Mornay) then takes a job as Sciorra's nanny, planning to ruin the family.

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Thrillers like this are a guilty pleasure for me, and although it has its silly parts, it doesn't get as wacky as you'd expect.Perhaps because it was written by a woman, but for whatever reason it builds up the female psycho character surprisingly well, with good motivation helped by De Mornay's sympathetic performance. When it all comes down to it, she really is just another movie lunatic, though watching the games she plays and allegiences she forms with different family members makes for tense, relatively believable viewing. Hanson seems at his livliest when executing thriller cliches, like the murder (there's only one, odd for this sort of thing) and also indulges in my favourite thriller cliche, a character learning about De Mornay's true nature by researching old newspaper slides in a library (Do libraries really have these?). Not that memorable overall, and much tamer than I would have liked, but it's a decent thriller-by-numbers.

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