When the Bough Breaks

Year: 2016

Actors: Jaz Sinclair, Theo Rossi, Michael Kenneth Williams, Regina Hall

Duration: 107 min

John Taylor (Morris Chestnut) is a lawyer on the verge of landing a big case, while his wife Laura (Regina Hall) works around the country securing clients of her own. They both want a child, but have been unsuccessful in conceiving following several miscarriages. They think they've found the answer to their prayers in Anna Walsh (Jaz Sinclair), a young woman who volunteers to be a surrogate for the two of them. Laura likes what she sees from Anna, and she chooses her.John and Laura get to know Anna, finding her to be pleasant and charming. The Taylors invite Anna and her boyfriend Mike Mitchell (Theo Rossi) over for dinner one night.Anna undergoes the procedure to be impregnated. After taking three home tests, Laura calls John to excitedly tell him that Anna is pregnant with their baby.Anna goes to John's job so he can take her to a doctors appointment since Mike didn't take her. John later takes Anna home and finds Mike there looking unhappy to see them together.The Taylors receive a distressing phone call. John goes by Mike's house to find the police there. Anna is sitting in the car with blood on her face. Mike hit her and he is now under arrest. Anna fears that she has no place else to go, but John says she can stay with him and Laura. As Anna walks away with John, Mike flips out and tries to run after them, but the cops pull him away.John meets with Mike in his holding cell. He presents Mike with a restraining order and other documents that would legally prevent him from being anywhere near Anna, but John says they haven't been filed yet, and they won't be if Mike manages to stay away from Anna. Mike agrees to it, but the smarmy shit-eating look on his face indicates he has other plans.John and Laura do their best to make Anna feel right at home. She joins Laura for yoga classes and reads self-help books to take control of her life. However, Anna starts to get too comfortable around John. She makes a comment that being pregnant with his child is like he is inside of her. She has him feel her stomach to SUPPOSEDLY feel what the baby is like at this stage...but that's clearly not the case.One evening, John thinks he hears something on the roof. He climbs a ladder in the pouring rain to investigate, but only discovers Anna in her room undressing. He stares at her nude body, and she notices.Anna starts sending John videos at work in which she takes her shirt off to reveal "baby" painted on her stomach. John then demands that Anna stop sending these videos, but she only continues to toy with him. John goes home to confront Anna and tell her that she's got the wrong idea and that he loves Laura.Anna secretly meets with Mike, who has made bail. He wants Anna to lie to the Taylors and pretend that she wants to back out of her pregnancy so that they can keep giving her money to stay. She doesn't want to go through with it because they are good to her, but Mike threatens her unless she agrees to go through with the plan, especially because he knows that she has a thing for John.Sometime later, Mike shows up at the Taylor house and smacks Anna for not doing what he told her to do. Later that evening, Anna goes to Mike's house and stabs him multiple times and then throws his body down the stairs into the basement where he bleeds out.Over the following months, Anna gets too close to John. While Laura is away on a business trip, Anna's advances become more blatant, to the point where she kisses John and openly admits that he makes her whole body react. Laura comes home early and nearly catches Anna in lingerie, but Anna changes quickly so that Laura is none the wiser.At work, John gets in hot water when his bosses tell him they monitored his email and saw the videos that Anna sent him. When they learn that Anna is a patient of the same company that John's company is going against, he loses the case to his rival Todd Becker (Romany Malco). Anna makes it worse by trying to seduce John at his office.John calls his friend Roland White (Michael K. Williams) to dig up some dirt on both Anna and Mike. Roland later tells John that Mike was discharged as a marine for a violent crime, while Anna's real last name isn't Walsh, but Devost. She lived with foster parents until she murdered her foster father with a pair of scissors after he sexually abused her. The surrogacy company never ran this over since Anna changed her name.As Anna continues to try and seduce John, he tries to placate her (especially since she's eyeing a pair of scissors on the table) by being kind and understanding. Anna tells John she loves him, but he only replies, "I know."Eventually, John gets tired of Anna's shit, and she declares that she will leave and take the baby with her. John opens the door and says she can leave, because while Laura would be heartbroken to find out what has been going on, she and John will manage to pick up the pieces and move on, while Anna will be left alone and broke with a child that is isn't really hers. Anna storms out as both Laura and the cops show up to witness the disturbance. Anna claims that John has been sleeping with her and manipulating her, causing Laura to be angry with John. He defends his claims that he has done nothing with Anna.John and Laura meet with their lawyer Peter Kaye (Tom Nowicki) to see what they can do about Anna. Peter says that the case would not be a kidnapping since Anna would be giving birth and the child would be hers until she relinquishes that right to the Taylors. With no other choice, Laura decides that John must do whatever he can to ensure that Anna will let them have the baby, even if it involves doing things that both of them don't want to think about.John brings Anna to a lake house that he and Laura own. He begins to passionately kiss Anna after convincing her that he has left Laura and wants to be with her instead.A while after, John returns home to Laura with utter remorse. She forgives him. Anna watches them from outside and goes back to her car to freak out. She then hatches an idea. John gets a phone call from Anna saying she's going into labor at the hospital. John and Roland head over to the hospital and find that Anna never checked in. That's because she's stalking Laura in her house. Laura hears a noise from upstairs and discovers the nursery in shambles, and the pet cat is mangled and bloodied in the crib. Anna runs out and whacks Laura with a lamp before repeatedly kicking her. Meanwhile, John and Roland go by Mike's house and find his rotting corpse in the basement. They rush back to the house. Anna's water then breaks, and Laura calls 911. Anna knocks Laura out before the medics arrive.John sits by Laura's bedside as she wakes up in the hospital. Roland tells them that Anna went to a different hospital and gave birth to a healthy baby boy, but she checked out a while ago. John figures that she must have gone back to the lake house to stay close and to keep the baby safe.John and Laura drive up to the lake house. John has Laura stay in the car for her safety. He enters the house and finds Anna sleeping in bed with the baby. John gently picks him up and puts him in a safety seat. Anna runs out and attacks John. The two fight in the kitchen until John slams Anna against a glass case of guns. John takes the baby outside to the car. Before he and Laura can leave, Anna comes out of the house with a rifle. She fires a buckshot at the couple and misses. Laura decides, "I'm so sick of this bitch!", and she floors the car to ram into Anna at full-speed, killing her.In the morning, Laura cradles the baby in her arms. The couple hears police sirens approaching. John assures Laura it's going to be okay as he waits for the cops to arrive.

Genre: Action   Crime   Drama   Horror   Mystery   Romance   Thriller