Filming began on Februin New Orleans, and was confirmed by Screen Gems on February 11. Production was first set to begin in late January 2015 in New Orleans, Louisiana. On January 8, 2015, Theo Rossi was added to the film. On December 16, 2014, Jaz Sinclair signed on to co-star. On November 18, 2014, Morris Chestnut and Regina Hall were cast to play the lead roles. On October 29, 2014, Sony's Screen Gems hired Jon Cassar to direct When the Bough Breaks, which Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne were producing.
Anna's psychotic and dangerous fixation with John becomes a deadly obsession. When Mike pushes Anna to demand money, she kills him. Anna's growing obsession interferes with what was a plan by her and her boyfriend, Mike, to scam the couple by demanding money. Everything seems fine until Anna starts to develop a fixation on John as the pregnancy moves further along. After attempting all other options, the couple hire a beautiful young woman named Anna (Jaz Sinclair) who agrees to become a gestational surrogate mother for the Taylors. Laura has already suffered three miscarriages. A Screen Gems release.A married couple in their 40s, John and Laura Taylor (Morris Chestnut and Regina Hall) desperately want to have a baby, but are unable to have a lasting pregnancy. MPAA Rating:PG-13 for violence, sexuality/partial nudity, thematic elements, some disturbing images, and languageĬredits: Directed by Jon Cassar, script by Jack OIsen. It just means they like what they see!”īut “When the Bough Breaks” gets the job done, even if we see this cradle rocking right out of the tree pretty much from the get go.ĭeeper significance? That’s for some future college course to dissect. Sinclair makes a sexy femme fatale, but there’s nothing subtle about the character, the performance or the I’m-having-your-baby-big-boy stares. It’s heavily patriarchal, as the husband is the only one to see the danger and tries to “handle” the situation on his own. Things follow a generally predictable path from there, with the question “What sort of game are they/Is she running here?” hanging over it all. Mousy but lovely Anna va-va-vooms up with barely an effort. And sure enough, the boyfriend beats up poor Anna, they invite Anna to stay with them and Temptation is Right Under Their Roof. John keeps his misgivings to himself to please his desperate-for-a-baby wife. And chef Laura (Hall) just melts for her, heedless of the dangers in putting their last egg into somebody whose beau does too much speaking for her and seems too eager to pass himself off as her pimp in this arrangement.
“I’ve never been able to give anybody anything!” she gushes. He’s a high-end corporate attorney who senses something predatory in the guy, and a little too goody-two-shoes about the young woman. Something about Anna (Sinclair) and her boyfriend (Theo Rossi) gives John Taylor (Chestnut) pause. It’s derivative and obvious, downright risible as it portrays Screen Gems’ go-to affluent hunk, Morris Chestnut, manfully resisting the frank sexual advances of the possibly dangerous and unstable surrogate (Jaz Sinclair) he and his wife (Regina Hall) have hired to carry their “last viable embryo” to term.īut from its New Orleans mansion and penthouse office suites, to its Mercedes and parties packed with haute couture glamour, it presents a vision of African American aspiration and achievement that Hollywood generally ignores. “When the Bough Breaks” does for surrogate mothers what “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” did for nannies, and does for another character what “Fatal Attraction” did for bunnies. But they share a sheen, a polish and a beauty that puts Tyler Perry’s similar ambitions to shame. The films may not have African-American directors or screenwriters, and some suffer a tone-deafness because of that. The studio, which gets by on random horror hits and the occasional franchise (“Resident Evil”) has made glossy African American comedies (“This Christmas”, “The Wedding Ringer”), romances (“Not Easily Broken”) and thrillers (“Obsessed,””No Good Deed”) its low-risk/high-return bread and better. If college cinema professors aren’t teaching “The Screen Gems View of Urban Affluence and its Impact on African American Aspiration,” then somebody is seriously missing the mark.