After muuuuch anticipation, People has finally released the first photos of Mary in director Michelle Garza Cervera’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Though the movie is a remake of the 1992 film, which starred Annabella Sciorra and Matt McCoy as the couple and Rebecca De Mornay as the nanny, this update is no carbon copy, promises director Michelle Garza Cervera, who teases plenty of “shocking moments.”
The film will release on Hulu October 22nd & you can view all the photos of Mary Elizabeth as her character Caitlin in the gallery.
“The studio gave me all the chances to recreate the whole thing and build a new story, new characters, with its own heart. I think that was the best way to honor the original, not try to redo it,” she says. “We build a whole different kind of thriller. It’s actually more of a slow burn.”
Garza Cervera also says the film will take place in Los Angeles instead of Seattle like the original film did and give the characters “more complex backstories”. “Instead of having just a victim and a perpetrator, they’re both in gray areas,” she says of Polly and Caitlin. “I love the kind of antagonists that you can, on a point, empathize with. So there’s a very interesting game, like yin and yang that happens between them.”
Garza Cervera says Monroe, a scream queen known for horror films like It Follows and Longlegs, was the perfect person to play Polly: “She brings a very evil, contained tone to the film that I’m super proud of.” Winstead, also no stranger to thrillers thanks to her turns in Final Destination 3 and 10 Cloverfield Lane, “is the kind of actress that can completely transform for a role,” adds Garza Cervera.
The filmmaker says the two leads share a chemistry that gives their characters a multilayered dynamic: “It’s very interesting to see, because in a moment you even feel like they could be attracted to each other.”
