![]() If she should get away from the couple with the baby without John somehow by her side, she's only entering a bleaker future with another life to take care of. For these Screen Gems films that talk about personal boundaries, which are violated by evil, initially innocent people who take advantage of good will, now we’re meant to root for characters to take away a baby from a woman who is revealed to be a multi-foster home kid and survivor of sexual abuse. A fun gap in all of this is the stated notion that the baby does not belong to the Taylors-ever, if Anna wishes-and it makes a pitch of Anna's mania essentially into that of a couple trying to snuff out the surrogate mother after failing to own her and then her baby. Anna is carrying their baby, but she wants to have John, too.ĭespite the story’s initially completely baffling but welcome focus on characters for a change, the movie is baffled by the requirement of motivation, instead wanting to honor ideas of obsession while finding a way to get some dead body insert shots into the mix. She has a shady fiancé, Mike ( Theo Rossi), who helps her create the image of a nice young couple, so much that when Mike is arrested for beating Anna, she is invited to stay at the Taylors’ beautiful New Orleans house, where an obsession suddenly flares within Anna. During the opening credits, they learn about Anna ( Jaz Sinclair), a smiling young woman who loves the idea of having something that someone else wants. They’ve gone through three miscarriages and are on their last embryo. Steered by a wall-to-wall score that tells you the exact tone of a scene, “When the Bough Breaks” starts innocently enough, with a beautiful couple, John and Laura Taylor ( Morris Chestnut and Regina Hall, respectively) who are trying to find the right surrogate mother. This would be fine if the story wasn’t so hideous, this time replacing the violent masculinity of characters played previously by Idris Elba (“No Good Deed”) and Michael Ealy (“The Perfect Guy”) with the tale of a villainous pregnant woman seeking to destroy a marriage and their last hope at having a baby, all to see if we have more taste than the film itself. ![]() When it yearns for horror thrills, the "behind you!" beats are by-the-book. It is directed in large part by stimulating pieces: establishing shots of powerful skyscrapers or the interiors of a fancy home close-ups of select PG-13 flesh. In fact, this probably is the first movie ever made in which a psycho killer stops short of completing an assault because her water breaks.The latest addition to this informal franchise is “When the Bough Breaks,” which boasts no good escapism and a very imperfect sense of humanity. On the other hand, it should be noted that “When the Bough Breaks” isn’t entirely bereft of surprises. How generic? Consider: A pet cat is pointedly acknowledged so many times in the first and second acts that only the most clueless viewers will be stunned when it’s revealed that, sometimes, nine lives are not enough. (Or at least as much heat as two semi-nude people can generate during a lovemaking scene in a PG-13 movie.)Ĭassar is slightly more successful when it comes to building suspense during the mandatory scenes of violence and danger, despite his reliance on shocks, setups and payoffs best described as generic. ![]() But despite Sinclair’s impressively smooth transition from girlish innocent to alluring sexpot, her character’s attempts at seduction fail to generate much dramatic tension, since there’s never any real doubt about John’s loyalty to Laura - primarily because Chestnut and Hall generate so much heat together. Working from a script by Jack Olsen, director Jon Cassar (“Forsaken”) dutifully endeavors to charge “When the Bough Breaks” with alternating currents of apprehension and eroticism. And as her pregnancy progresses, she grows ever obsessed with forming closer ties with the inconveniently married father of the baby she is carrying. Trouble is, Anna isn’t quite as virtuous, or as harmless, as she seems. ![]() When Mike appears to dial it up from creepy to abusive, the Taylors invite Anna to move into the guest house of their lush Garden District home.
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