IVF and surrogates according to Hollywood

Yesterday, I made the mistake of going to see the 10:10 pm showing of When The Bough Breaks. That kind of behavior is out of my life henceforth because I was exhausted by the time I was driving home. I'm up by 5:30 AM most days to get to work by seven, so by the end of the movie I'd been awake for eighteen hours. Which may not sound that bad, but I couldn't even go to dinner afterwards, and in fact should not have been driving. At red lights, some of which I almost missed, I tried to take mini-naps. Many people do that, I know, but I'm not one of them. In fact, I take the bust to work because I don't want to risk having to drive when I'm post call. I've seen too many horrific accidents to not be a very cautious driver.

Anyway, the movie. Very few people seem to have reviewed it, but I can't tell if that's because no one went to see it, or because of some critics embargo. Somehow, I doubt it was the latter. This movie didn't strike me as having delusions of grandeur:

This is the rare trailer that lets me know exactly what kind of movie this will be without spoiling every little thing that happens, though that might be because When the Bough Breaks makes no attempts to be deep or controversial despite its premise. Still, I'm surprised that it has a 0% on RottenTomatoes. The leads are charming enough, and the first two acts build excellent suspense. That should be enough to earn it some praise, even though the third act is a severe disappointment. 

I can live with the movie not trying to say anything complex or intelligence about its premise. What happens when a surrogate mother decides that she wants to keep the baby she's carrying? Who are the child's true parents? The people who provided the genetic material, or the woman who's donating her body to carry the child? What are the legal intricacies here, considering this technology may not have much legal precedent?

When the Bough Breaks avoids having to engage any of these questions by making Anna Walsh, the surrogate mother, a typical crazy Hollywood stalker. Think Fatal Attraction meets Single White Female. Some attempts are made to give her a sympathetic backstory during the first act, but these attempts are forgotten by the end, when the movie needs a villain and the generic abusive boyfriend has been exterminated. 

Sidestepping difficult questions doesn't make When the Bough Breaks a bad movie, though. The trailer is pretty honest about what this movie is trying to do: a standard film about a dangerous spurned woman who might have unspecific personality disorders. Melodrama has its place in the world, after all. If When the Bough Breaks fails, it's because it doesn't embrace its melodrama as much as it should. Those attempts made during the first two acts to make Anna sympathetic? They kinda ruin the catharsis of the final act.