Just in time for Halloween, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is revamped for 2025 — with a fresh storyline that departs from the 1992 original. Scream queen Maika Monroe plays Polly, a nanny who starts looking after Caitlin (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Miguel Morales’ (Raúl Castillo) kids. However, as they say, beware the babysitter…

Director Michelle Garza Cervera spoke with Offscreen Central about how she reimagined the horror thriller flick into a twisty tale filled with emotional depth.

Lexi Lane: While it was technically a remake, you’ve shared that you had pretty much a blank slate with new characters and a very different story than the one before and built for 2025. Did this freedom allow for more of a collaborative process with the actors? 
Michelle Garza Cervera: Yes, 100% with the whole team and starting with the amazing cast that we had. It was a project that grew up in a very organic way. We had the first concept of ‘Okay, how do we reimagine that movie which is so iconic?’ [and] we worked on it in a very particular way for this film. With the actors, it was an incredible process because each of them had their own backstories, intentions, conflicts, and reasons why they’re doing what they’re doing. All of that is particular to this film. Everything became very specific to the point that the movie felt like it had its own identity. That came with a lot of work and investment.

Lexi Lane: Was there a scene in the film that was your favorite to shoot? Or even the most-challenging one?
Michelle Garza Cervera: There’s this moment in the kitchen where the two leads are having a very important conversation. To me, that was such a challenging thing, in the sense that everything is so delicate. It could go wrong very easily because it’s such a hard scene to play, but only actresses of this level can pull that off. It was just so incredible to see it on set. They moved me to tears, I’m not kidding. 

I think that scene challenges many things of the genre because I feel it takes you to a point of understanding the characters from other perspectives. I’m super proud of that scene. I really didn’t even add music, [it’s] just about them. I think it’s very layered. Every time I see it, I get goosebumps.

Lexi Lane: Something that really interested me was the idea of mirrors throughout the movie, even with the end credit song, and there’s one part specifically near the end where Maika’s character Polly and Mary’s Caitlin are overlapped in the reflections. I’m wondering what your perception of their characters is in terms of being mirrors of each other?
Michelle Garza Cervera: There was a whole thing about two women that are connected by a traumatic event. You do wonder what needs to happen in life for one of them to be inside a house in a safety zone, and the other one to have that completely contradictory upbringing. I really love the fact of both looking kind of similar and having a ghostly mirroring between them. It kind of opens those questions about who is on what side and who wants to take over the other side. 

There’s a very interesting merging that they have, which is mysterious. We always approach it with the two actresses as two characters that have been looking for each other their whole lives. When they find the other, they kind of see themselves in the other one. There was something about it that it became a big theme of the film. 

With the whole team, the production designer, the cinematographer, we were so lucky to find that house that is filled with glass and we brought so many mirrors in. We built so much around it. I really love that it was not random. It’s really meaningful for the identity of the story.

Lexi Lane: Is there something you hope new watchers take away from this film?
Michelle Garza Cervera: I really hope they, apart from having fun and thrills and really being entertained by it — which we really wanted that — I think it really opens conversations about the genre itself. As thrillers, sometimes we play with evil and good. I really wanted to challenge that and have characters that are more in the gray areas. We’re trying to challenge the audience for them to put themselves in the feet of characters we’d usually sometimes see from a judgmental perspective. I really hope they embrace that. 

Also, I think it opens questions about how violence repeats itself, and how sometimes it’s very hard to escape from that. It’s not like we can easily become happy and have a happy ending. I feel like there’s traumas and violence that just keeps going, and you have to be able to speak about it. And embrace it, in a way, as well.

Lexi Lane: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today!
Michelle Garza Cervera: Thank you! I love your questions and I think you really understand the movie.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is streaming on Hulu now!