Backdrop fallback

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

Share

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

"Trust is her weapon. Innocence her opportunity. Revenge her only desire."

1992

1h 50m

6.9(1028 votes)

Drama

Thriller

Overview

A suburban family chooses seemingly sweet Peyton Flanders as their newborn's nanny. Only much later does the infant's mother, Claire Bartel, realize Peyton's true intentions -- to destroy Claire and replace her in the family. The nail-biting suspense builds quickly in this chilling psychological thriller about deception and bitter revenge.

Where to Watch

Buy

Google Play Movies

YouTube

Rent

Google Play Movies

YouTube

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

Hollywood Pictures

Interscope Communications

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Annabella Sciorra

Annabella Sciorra

Claire Bartel

Rebecca De Mornay

Rebecca De Mornay

Mrs. Mott / Peyton Flanders

Matt McCoy

Matt McCoy

Michael Bartel

Ernie Hudson

Ernie Hudson

Solomon

Madeline Zima

Madeline Zima

Emma Bartel

Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore

Marlene Craven

John de Lancie

John de Lancie

Dr. Victor Mott

Kevin Skousen

Marty Craven

Mitchell Laurance

Mitchell Laurance

Lawyer

Jane Jones

Woman in Park

Creative team

Directed by: Curtis Hanson
Written by: Amanda Silver
Produced by: David Madden

Similar Movies

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

The Dark

The Dark

In an attempt to pull her family together, Adèlle travels with her young daughter Sarah to Wales to visit her father. The morning after they arrive, Sarah mysteriously vanishes in the ocean. Not long after, a little girl bearing a striking resemblance to their missing daughter reveals that she has retuned from the dead — and that Sarah has been taken to the Welsh underworld.

Twelve Monkeys

Twelve Monkeys

In the year 2035, convict James Cole reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to discover the origin of a deadly virus that wiped out nearly all of the earth's population and forced the survivors into underground communities. But when Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990 instead of 1996, he's arrested and locked up in a mental hospital. There he meets psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly and the son of a famous virus expert who may hold the key to the Army of the 12 Monkeys; thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease.

Walk the Line

Walk the Line

A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner

In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.

Still Life

Still Life

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

Reign Over Me

Reign Over Me

A man who lost his family in the September 11 attack on New York City runs into his old college roommate. Rekindling the friendship is the one thing that appears able to help the man recover from his grief.

The Island of Thirty Coffins

The Island of Thirty Coffins

The story takes place in 1917. Véronique is a young woman of 35 years, nurse at the military hospital of Besançon. She suddenly learns of the murder of her husband, the mysterious Count Vorski, whom she has not seen for fourteen years. Her research will also lead her to the track of her father and son whom she believed to have died in a shipwreck, already a long time ago. From clue to clue, here we are in Brittany, on this island with a name so ill-fitting... Brutal deaths, enigmatic words written... by whom? A frightening prophecy, the superstitious terror of the island's inhabitants, and suddenly, Veronica d'Hergemont can no longer leave this island. She's stuck alone. Almost alone...

The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Supremacy

A CIA operation to purchase classified Russian documents is blown by a rival agent, who then shows up in the sleepy seaside village where Bourne and Marie have been living. The pair run for their lives and Bourne, who promised retaliation should anyone from his former life attempt contact, is forced to once again take up his life as a trained assassin to survive.

Our Mother's House

Our Mother's House

Seven children bury their mother and hide her death - until their long-lost father returns.

Nobody Knows

Nobody Knows

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

Malice

Malice

A tale about a happily married couple who would like to have children. Tracy teaches infants, Andy's a college professor. Things are never the same after she is taken to hospital and operated upon by Jed, a "know all" doctor.

Paris Je T'aime

Paris Je T'aime

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Prime

Prime

A career driven professional from Manhattan is wooed by a young painter, who also happens to be the son of her psychoanalyst.

This Man Must Die

This Man Must Die

When his young son is killed in a hit and run accident, Charles Thenier resolves to hunt down and murder the killer. By chance, Thenier makes the acquaintance of an actress, Helène Lanson, who was in the car at the time of the accident. He then meets Helène’s brother-in-law, Paul Decourt, a truly horrible individual.

Spanglish

Spanglish

Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.

Closer

Closer

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

Signs

Signs

A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening to come.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.

Mouchette

Mouchette

A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.

Recommended Movies

Mothers' Instinct

Mothers' Instinct

Housewives Alice and Celine are best friends and neighbours who seem to have it all. However, when a tragic accident shatters the harmony of their lives, guilt, suspicion and paranoia begin to unravel their sisterly bond.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk About Kevin

After her son Kevin commits a horrific act, troubled mother Eva reflects on her complicated relationship with her disturbed son as he grew from a toddler into a teenager.

Acrimony

Acrimony

Faithful wife Melinda, who is tired of standing by her devious husband Robert, is enraged when it becomes clear she has been betrayed. That's when she lost it, and now she cannot let it go.

Sister My Sister

Sister My Sister

A true story of shocking violence catapults a picturesque little town into history. The close sibling relationship between the two maids takes on a new dimension as their overbearing employer discovers a sexual fever between the two sisters.

Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals

Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.

Derailed

Derailed

When two married business executives having an affair are blackmailed by a violent criminal, they are forced to turn the tables on him to save their families.

Room

Room

Held captive for 7 years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.

The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense

Following an unexpected tragedy, child psychologist Malcolm Crowe meets a nine year old boy named Cole Sear, who is hiding a dark secret.

The Truth About Emanuel

The Truth About Emanuel

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

Cape Fear

Cape Fear

Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.

The Glass House

The Glass House

When Ruby and Rhett's parents are killed in a car accident, their carefree teenage lives are suddenly shattered. Moving to an incredible house in Malibu with the Glasses', old friends of the family, seems to be the beginning of a new life for them.

Sympathy for the Devil

Sympathy for the Devil

After being forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where it becomes clear that not everything is as it seems.

Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

Is God Is

Is God Is

Two sisters embark on an epic quest for revenge, confronting a charged family history that pushes them to extraordinary lengths.

Magpie

Magpie

A couple's lives are thrown into disarray when their daughter is cast opposite a controversial major star.

The Florida Project

The Florida Project

The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times.

Eye for an Eye

Eye for an Eye

It's fire and brimstone time as grieving mother Karen McCann takes justice into her own hands when a kangaroo court in Los Angeles fails to convict Robert Doob, the monster who raped and murdered her 17-year-old daughter.

Leave the World Behind

Leave the World Behind

A family's getaway to a luxurious rental home takes an ominous turn when a cyberattack knocks out their devices—and two strangers appear at their door.

Good Boy

Good Boy

Tommy, a volatile 19-year-old, revels in drugs, parties and violence. After getting separated from his friends on a drunken bender, he is abducted by a shadowy figure. He wakes to find himself imprisoned in the basement of a remote Yorkshire house, inhabited by a very strange family. But what unfolds is not what he could possibly expect.

Addicted

Addicted

A gallerist risks her family and flourishing career when she enters into an affair with a talented painter and slowly loses control of her life.