The Cradle
(2006/Thriller)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C+
Among the
many terrible supernatural thrillers gong straight to DVD for the most part,
you hope that against all odds, someone will try to do something ambitious and
make a feature that is at least intelligent and has potential. Though it unfortunately implodes in the final
10 minutes, Tim J. Brown’s The Cradle
(2006) is one of the very few titles worth your time. The story about a young couple with a newborn
baby moving to a new home in the middle of nowhere sounds familiar and has been
badly botched of late. Brown almost
pulls it off.
Frank
(the underrated, underused Lukas Haas) has a wife that is suffering severe
post-partum depression ands cannot even hold their baby Sam. Both feel a change of location to a quieter
area would help, but something is not well about the house or area and things
start to become stranger, especially where the baby is concerned. It gets worse when the power lines go down,
block the road and leave the new family without power. There is also their one neighbor who takes
care of a farm of her own and may know than she lets on.
There are
some good moments of suspense and the acting is impressive for a genre
work. If Brown and writer Paul Nelson
could have figured out how to conclude this and make some more points, this
could have been another Halloween-type
success, but both establish themselves here as up and coming talents who should
try again. If they were smart enough to
get Haas, who knows how else they might surprise us.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is nicely shot by Director of
Photography Marcus Elliott, including some fine fades and editing, but this
disc is just too soft throughout and despite some good shots, also has some
degraded ones. The transfer has to be
part of it, but it is worth dealing with its shortcomings to see. The sound here in Dolby Digital 5.1 is not
always active, using silence to build suspense, while dialogue is recorded very
well for the most part. Extras include
trailers and a good making of piece. For
all the bad Supernatural Horror titles being released, The Cradle is a step above the rest and the many bad remakes in the
genre we have suffered through lately.
Fans should go out of their way to try it out.
- Nicholas Sheffo
