When the Bough Breaks is a story about a wealthy couple in New Orleans who are down to their final chance to have a baby via surrogacy. Along comes a completely innocent and sweet young girl named Anna (Jaz Sinclair), who is too nice to be trusted by anyone with an IQ above 4. Anna is joined by her fiancé (Theo Rossi) who might as well be wearing a sign around his neck saying “I’m the villain”. The script is unbelievably poor and holds less weight than a 7-year-old with leukemia so let’s get the details.
Anna manages to take such advantage of Laura’s (Regina Hall) desperate state to have a child that they blatantly ignore a mountain of red flags with this couple in order to have a kid. Almost immediately things go wrong as Anna’s fiancé who only facial expression is evil, assaults Anna leading to her stay with John (Chestnut) and his wife until the baby is born. Anna falls in love with John and despite warning signs bigger than the ones in Las Vegas; John decides to not say a word to anyone including his wife until she decides to run away with the baby. Turns out Anna is a psychotic criminal who has already killed people before but I guess John’s super expensive surrogacy agency doesn’t conduct criminal background checks…or psych evaluations for that matter. There is a fight at the end or something and Anna dies after getting hit by car so…yay?
The best thing that I can say about this film is that it’s so bad, it’s good as long as you treat this film as a comedy and not a thriller. So many tropes we have seen in other films such as Obsessed, The Perfect Guy, and No Good Deeds…and they are all bad. The characters don’t think or act like real people. The drama is artificial and turned up to 11. Not to mention logic is pretty much left at the door with your coat. If you start asking questions like; How did a lawyer not know basic surrogate rights? How could a court back someone who is clearly a danger to a child? Or How did a detective figure out what a major organization could not? Honestly, you are doing too much. If you are not watching ‘When the Bough Breaks’ for its amusing disregard for common sense my only question for you is, Why are you watching this?
1/5
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