When the Bough Breaks (1994) - Movie Review
Ah, the 90’s, my personal favorite time for film. VHS came into prominence and pretty much any idea got turned into a movie. Giant ticks that grew out of a pot farm, check. A four-inch-tall alien cop fights a group of possessed dolls, check. It didn’t matter how crazy the idea was or how low the budget, all that mattered was that you had good cover art. Often, the absolute worst films had the best covers. The quality films normally flew under the radar because the production budget was focused on other things like casting and screenwriting.
When the Bough Breaks is a movie that falls into the latter category. As you can see from the image above, the marketing for this film was milk toast at best. I don’t remember this movie being advertised at all. Which is shocking considering the glut of acting talent on display. Martin Sheen, Ally Walker, and Ron Pearlman headline, but it also features an amazing amount of character actors in supporting roles including the likes of Robert Knepper and Scott Lawrence. From what I can tell, the film wasn’t released in theaters beyond its initial showing at Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (prestigious right?). This was a straight to video feature, which at the time was common at the time. Many productions were sold on the festival circuit for insane amounts of money, just because there just weren’t enough movies to fill the video store shelves. This doesn’t mean the movies were bad, but maybe they just weren’t as good as the films they sought to emulate.
After The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991, the floodgates of serial killer thriller burst open. Every film company put out at least one attempt to cash-in on the craze. Many put out multiple. Many of these films are horrible with a few exceptions. When the Bought Breaks falls into a weird gray area. It’s not horrible, but it’s not good enough to be recommendable.
The basic premise of the film is that a flood in Houston, TX uncovers a bag of severed children’s hands that have all been tattooed with numbers. This discovery leads the local police chief, Captain Swaggert (Martin Sheen) to recruit a profiler / computer expert / maybe a cop or federal agent, Audrey Macleah (Ally Walker). Her actual job in the movie doesn’t make much sense. She uses a commodore 64 to edit crime scene footage in one scene and in another, It’s implied that she’s a psychologist of some kind, oh and she has a tortured past that involves huge scars on her back (that are never explained!) The beginning of the film is used to go to great lengths to show that she’s an outsider. She’s a woman in a pantsuit who doesn’t take any shit from men. The male cops are written way over the top to emphasize how useless they are, but when they argue with her over strategy in an early scene, her arguments are childish and make no logistical sense. It almost feels like they didn’t want to fully commit to the feminist message. Audrey really doesn’t do anything other than talk to a mute child who may or may not be psychic, who lives in a mental institution. The child isn’t violent or dangerous, but for some reason he’s kept in a Hannibal Lecter like cell. The boy channels the spirits of the dead kids, or does he? Sounds exciting right? Well, it’s not. There’s way too much going on and none of it involves the actual serial killer. You have no exposure to the killer until the final five minutes of the movie. There are two or three attempts at red herrings, but they fall completely flat. Just like the movie.
The actors desperately try to redeem this horrible film. Martin Sheen steals every scene he’s in, but alas he only has about twelve minutes of screen time. Ally Walker is stunningly beautiful, and her voice is mesmerizing, but her character is just a Lame attempt at creating a new Clarice Starling. There is little reason to watch this movie other than to be able to say you watched it.
