The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)

Months before we were blessed with Single White Female, we got another high camp, “crazy woman” thriller called The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, in which Rebecca De Mornay plays Peyton, a nanny seeking revenge on an idyllic, unsuspecting family. There is nothing subtle or mysterious about this movie. There are no twists, no turns. Just cold, calculating Peyton, sowing havoc every damn moment.

You could take this movie as just a fluffy Hallmark-style cautionary-tale (women, don’t hire attractive nannies!). But I think the insidious concept at play surpasses the film’s actual text. It sticks in your psyche, the idea of another woman sneaking in to nurse your own baby. Despite it being right there, just below the surface, the characters never confront the way gender contributes to their misery. Peyton is obsessed with having a family, and Claire could have easily been struggling with post-partum. Julianne Moore shows up (and steals all her scenes) as the best friend who’s immediately suspicious of Peyton, but is only worried about Claire “loosing her man” to the new nanny. At no point to any of them point at the men who put them in this situation, and Claire’s husband does little more than just exist on screen.

It’s easy to overlook the obvious gender roles, because the movie also includes the character of Soloman, the only non-white person on screen. Soloman has an unspecified developmental disorder, and is quickly adopted by the family, like a mascot ☹️ Peyton does abominable things to him, and in the end it’s Soloman that arrives to save the day. It plays into both tropes of the magical disability AND magical negro, and it’s deeply uncomfortable to watch.
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