While the Children Sleep (A.K.A. The Sitter) (2007)
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
Written by Stephen Niver
Produced by Lincoln Lageson, Randy Pope, Kevin Bocarde, Nick Lombardo, Michael Moran, Robert A. Halmi, Larry Levinson
Starring Mariana Klaveno, Gail O’Grady, William R. Moses, Madison Davenport, Tristan Lake Leabu, Stacy Haiduk, Joanne Baron, Jon Lindstrom, Thomas Curtis, Alan Blumenfeld, Andrew Masset, Kim Delgado, Nancy Bell
Their kids (Davenport, Leabu) love her, now well-behaved under her gentle discipline, and all of her chores are performed satisfactorily. Would that a pretty nanny (Klaveno) employed by working parents (O’Grady, Moses) wasn’t a bloodguilty erotomaniac whose fixation on father actuates her to transform unavoidable obstacles — her imaginary inamorato’s lewd law partner (Lindstrom), a snooping shrew (Baron), mom’s suspicious workmate (Haiduk) — into cumulatively conspicuous corpses. Prolific Mulcahy is renowned for the successes of Highlander and bounteous music videos, and his contemporaneous administration of a sequel in the Resident Evil series hardly diverted him from this televised triviality. If anything, his shots by dolly and crane are a shade extravagant for this production, and zooms on glowering Klaveno that foretoken her murders are as silly as jerkily manual shots of her violent, obligatory tantrum. In one dimension, performances are perforce perfunctorily dry; creepily comely Klaveno relies more on screen presence than talent, though she wasn’t parceled substance beyond that of her co-stars. For its plodding pace, a few too many characters, and the monotonous pianistic motifs and synth strings of Elia Cmiral’s music, this flat, featherweight Hand That Rocks the Clichés underwhelms, only differentiable by its telegenic leading lady from other imitations-by-numbers.
Instead, watch The Hand that Rocks the Cradle or Emilie.
