"The Cradle" is one of the hardest films ever to call a horror film.**SPOILERS**Moving into a new house, newlyweds Frank, (Lukas Haas) and his wife Julie Brooksfield, (Emily Hampshire) fix it up for their baby, only for their marital issues to get in the way. Even though none of the neighbors offer up any help, they decide to deal with it on their own. The more they try to help each other deal with the baby, the more they have problems dealing with it, and once he starts to complain that something is after their child, she blames it on him and ignores it. Getting help from Helen, (Amanda Smith) who tells him that there's the ghost of the previous resident who now is haunting the estate, and they decide to fight back and stop the ghost from destroying the family.The Good News: There is hardly anything in this one worthwhile. The main plot-line about the baby being in jeopardy does have some solid credence to it, as it's a pretty frightening idea that is really well-played and actually works. From the motions on the hidden camera to the dreams and hallucinations and the constant agonizing over what's happening, there's a lot to this and it's one of the best things about the film. That's also boosted by one of the only worthwhile scenes in the film, where supernatural forces are shown moving the baby across the table with only the garments on the table beside it indicating the move. It's creepy, disturbing and actually well-done, which indicates that something weird is happening and after the child, scoring well with several points. These, though, are all that make this one interesting.The Bad News: There's not a whole lot to this one, since there's really big, damaging flaws to this one. The main one is that this one is just ungodly boring. Nothing at all happens in here except for a several brief moments, but the rest of the film, literally nothing happens. The majority of time is spent with the guy and the baby, not exactly thrilling beyond the one moment where something actually happens, but that's about it. There's a ton of talk about something, but it's done in such a manner that it's nothing that matters or not. It doesn't matter what happens, whether or not that the film decides to make them seem so important, yet they're the main focus of the story for the first fifty minutes of it's running time, and that is something that is a major mistake. The lack of action also makes the later segments seem that much more dull, as running around screaming at anything that moves doesn't do much to inspire fear. That may well be the whole problem with the film, nothing in here actually does anything to inspire fear. That's the major, overall problem with this one, that no one outside of parents will find this one frightening, scary or even entertaining. It's dull, lifeless and uses tactics that will only get a jolt from those in that situation, and not much of anything else in here will work in here. These here are the film's overall flaws.The Final Verdict: With a ton of dullness, nothing really much interesting happening and a selected audience, this one is pretty much doomed to fail. Really only those who will find the premise intriguing or scary should give this one a watch, otherwise skip this one and give others a shot.Rated R: Mild Violence, Language and children in danger

O.k., so here is what I think happened: He and his wife did have three miscarriages before they had this fourth baby. One night, the baby was running a fever but the roads were closed or bad due to weather and he promised his wife that as soon as the roads opened again, they would take the baby to the hospital, but for now they would have to take care of the baby themselves. Now - here is where I am not sure what happened, so I have come up with two possible scenarios:scenario 1: the baby died from his sickness before they could get him to the hospital; the wife killed herself due to the grief (jumped into the river or whatever); the husband went insane from his grief and blamed himself for the baby's death. He went delusional and held on to the baby's corpse and imagined his wife's presence. He also imagined the wife's ghost because his subconscious was telling him that she wanted the baby with her in heaven or in death or something like that - i.e. his subconscious knew they were both dead and the wife's ghost was his delusional manifestation of that. He had to finally come out of his delusion when he gave the old woman the baby because the old woman could see the baby was dead and made him face it. The end of the movie is him realizing all of this and remembering what really happened.scenario 2: basically the same as scenario 1 except for how the baby and wife died - so, instead of the baby dying of the illness and the wife from suicide, they instead decided to go to the hospital despite the weather because they were so ultra-sensitive about their baby's health because they had already lost three as stillbirths. Their car veered off the road because of the bad weather and into the river and the baby and wife were killed; as in the first scenario, the husband became crazed and delusional, carried the baby back home and pretended it didn't happen.As for the old woman and her baby sister being buried alive, I have no idea what that has to do with the story other than: 1) to give an opening to the discussion about the stillborn issue and bring that story-line forward and (2) to further the ghost story-line to throw us off the real story.Anybody have any thoughts on my interpretations?

Somebody wrote that he for 60% used the FF-button. 60% is not much. One can easily skip 75% without missing what the makers call the story. Anyone who dares to write that Sergio Leone is slow should see this one non-stop twice.First spoiler: A very typical scene is the first visit of Frank to Helen. He walks, walks, walks around, walks a little more, says "Hello!", walks more, says "Hello!" again and finally after hears "Go away." Second spoiler: the first 15 minutes we see a ferry-boat crossing a river, Frank, Julie and Sam arriving and looking at the house and finally going inside unpacking a few things.This movie greatly would have benefited from condensing to 30 minutes at the max.

With this movie I was expecting one of those (most) badly made horror movies, where u just scream but there's else to it! However this movie really surprised me in a good way, the actor aren't very well known guess that added to not doing so well at the box office,but it's a very good movie. It is carefully done in a way u never expect what the outcome is! To me it resembles "The Others" that movie with Nicole Kidman...yes a tweak here and there would have made it really great, but in spite of that I would say it was pretty darn good, and Im not at all a fan of horror movies, I was just watching it with a friend out t of boredom...