MovieChat Forums > When the Bough Breaks (1994) Discussion > Good start, little substance, terrible e...

Good start, little substance, terrible ending


Ok, let's begin a discussion on this 11 year old movie.
This movie needed at the very least, another 20 minutes to have been done right.

What happened to the ending of this movie? It sucked.
I don't know where others got this idea that it was a perfect thriller.
There was very little thrill and a lot of stupidity at the end.

First off, she's an FBI agent for 4+ years and she is going to break into a house where she has no idea what she is going to find and really has no reason to. She just blindly (on impulse) decides to break the law for pretty much no reason. Then, while in the house she gets the 1 girl out the window but can't pull herself out the window for 5 minutes while the dude is burning up trying to break through the door? Especialy with a dresser there and a chair to use to get out? I mean a friggin retard could have gotten out. The one girl from the back room pulled herself out in less time with her hands tied in front of her.
This is where I lost intrerest. It was the stupid helpless female routine. Very lame. Actualy I started losing interest when she broke into the house to begin with, then more when she dropped her gun out the window, had her hand on it and didn't spend the extra 30 seconds to grab hold of it. This was rushed, bad directing and acting.

Then the very end when jordon walks out of the hospital with bandages around his wrists. What the hell was that about? His/Her hands were working fine, there was no reason for the bandages. It was stupid.

You can try to put all kinds of deep thoughts into duality and twin relationship. But this movie failed to really hit on it (in any sense of the term) profoundly.

This movie had potential and was blown by rushed stupidity.

I gave it a 1 cause the last half of the movie (from where you see Two Rivers on the wall in Jordons room) was so lame. I really don't care who was in it.
To explain further, look at Mission to Mars. That movie had potential and a lot of (at the time) respectable, good actors. That movie sucked also.

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Spot on.


I started to switch channels when it was clear it's going to be a "classic hollywood ending", with the main hero saving the day all by him/herself, in the most dramatic way possible, and with absolutely no reason. That was about 30 minutes into the movie. I get very angy at these cliches.

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"It was the stupid helpless female routine. Very lame. Actualy I started losing interest when she broke into the house to begin with, then more when she dropped her gun out the window, had her hand on it and didn't spend the extra 30 seconds to grab hold of it. This was rushed, bad directing and acting."

You hit the nail. This movie was lame +1. The screenwriter did not even know the rule of the "idiot on the attic". And this how the main character behaved when she entered the house at the end. I know why Martin Sheen was only in this movie for some scenes because he knew this is eh bullsh*t.

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"They don't give you the leads, they don't give you the support, they don't give you dick." (Dave Moss)

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[deleted]

Exactly! This movie had potential... Too bad they threw it together like they did. It could have been a truly classic thriller and instead it ended up a bomb. I HATE when they leave loose ends that foul up the entire meaning of the film. The only thing that is clear about the plot is the weirdo abducting a child one year older each year. But why??? Where was the girl Jennifer all this time? In his basement? Is she supposed to be his daughter? If so, why is he out abducting kids her age? What the devil is wrong with her hands? Where is the girl when the guy is not on "vacation" to feed her? What's up with Jordan's wrists at the end? And why do the kids act like something from the "X-Files" at the end?

No to mention the spaced-out profiler chick. What happened to her back? Someone beat her and kept her in their basement? No cop in their right mind would go into a situation like that in such a bizarre manner. Good grief, why did they even bother to make this movie?

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I've always thought a lot of good movies from between around '70-'90 in the thriller genre had tons of potential but could NOT close the door. They were like boxers would just couldn't put the opponent away. This movie is an example. Could have had a great ending. JUst kinda fizzled. Look at, lets say Dirty Harry, the original Dirty Harry with the Scorpio killer. Killer movie but the end? It just kind of ended!!! Now, I don't think I really minded this so much back when they came out but since seeing movies with phenominal endings (Usual Suspects for example, I've begun to feel a little disappointed with older movies endings.


Merry Christmas
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i got sick of the typical "male co-workers make fun of female who obviously can't do it as well as the men" routine.

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This post is now over 3 years old... and it is still true...

It started with a pretty good story... then falls apart....

To disagree with one thing said...
She broke into the killer's house only after seeing the ice cream truck, which in this case would be considered just cause, and she wouldn't need a warrant...

But it goes south from there...

She enters the killer's house but doesn't call for any back-up...
The house has a basement, but there are no basements in houses in Houston...
They go to great lengths to show that she has a fear of confined places, but she has no problem going into or functioning in the dark basement of the killer...

and too much more to list and this movie isn't worth it...

2/10... for the good start...



"Now get him out of here before I shoot him for trying to escape reality."

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Hate to tell you this, but Houston does have a few older homes with basements. Been in Houston 41 years and know this is true. There aren't that many, but you can find some.

BTW, couldn't finish the movie since it was so late, so no comments on that.

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I am the same with everybody here. Ya what is up with the hands, what was he doing, cutting the hands off the abducted girls and surgically putting them on his daughter? Why each year?? What was up with the contraptions on her hands at the end???

Too many things left open was my exact comment on the end of this movie.

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***********SPOILERS*********


Surprised there's not more positives here about this film. And how so many missed the point.



1- The Doctor's pianist wife dies in child birth.
2- Female twin is born with deformed hands.
3- Doctor begins kidnapping girls, same age as daughter, to surgically replace daughters deformed hands with victims hands.
4- He needs to do this every year as the grafted hands do not grow progressively as daughter grows.
5- I am not sure about the male twin, but will assume as others have, that he either witnessed the early surgery attempts or somehow was part of the research given his own scars.
6- The Doctors reason - to have his daughter play piano to replace the loss of his wife.

Pretty simple and all there in the film. Like it or not.


~LjM
Step on it! And don't spare the atoms!

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Finally someone who paid attention watching the film. Why do so many people insist on blaming perfectly functioning films and stories for their own inability to actually pay attention? I guess most people are simply ignorant and/or very stupid. Well probably not all of them. I guess some of them could be on drugs that impair their brains from functioning properly.

Hidyho!

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In the basement lab, there was an X-ray image on a light box on the wall. It wasn't on screen very long, but it showed a hand with more than the normal number of fingers. Apparently the girl had been born with hands the father thought of as abnormal. His wife had been a concert pianist. Obviously he was obsessed with having the girl be able to play as her mother had done. Perhaps he kept attaching new "normal" hands from the girls he kidnapped and his daughter kept rejecting them. The hands wouldn't grow so he kept having to replace them with larger hands as she grew.

Another possibility is that he thought it was the fault of the hands themselves that his daughter couldn't play the piano so he kept attaching new ones.

The boy was autistic, but I think the real reason he was in the mental ward was because the father needed to put him away to try to keep him quiet about what he was doing to the sister.

As for why the boy's wrists showed scars and bleeding and were bandaged at the end... Jordon had an intense psychic connection to his twin. He was able to channel her emotions and experiences and even showed scars when she had surgery.

The profiler didn't say she was afraid of dark places, she was afraid of close places--where there was a narrow space. Yes, it seems foolish for her to have gone into the house by herself. I think it would have been more logical for her to have backup.Whenever the father attached new hands, he showed the scars.

At the end, the girl had apparently had some type of surgery on her wrists. Perhaps they had attached a new pair of donor hands--I'm not sure about that.

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in reply to orumph: You took the words right out of my mouth! It started off really well, but as it gets towards the end (when she breaks into the house), it just get boring and stupid.

"I wished Her back but the dead adored Her, Even wild winds sang in chora for Her"

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I really liked this movie. Ok, not everything in this movie is great, but Im not sure what happened. It looks like if somebody (producers ?), cut out maybe 20 minutes. Because of that, not everything makes sense. But Ally Walker is hot and plays her character nicely. Under this movie, is buried a much better one. Still, Its entertaining and I enjoy it. 7/10

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[deleted]

Much has been said, and it's still not everything that's wrong with the movie.

Another point: Twins of different sex are simply brother and sister that have grown in the womb at the same time. They're not from one egg, so they're not identical twins. Thus the whole twin-story line is simply wrong.

And ... ok, a kid gets into psychiatry at 5 yrs and is kept in the basement, in a totally empty room (not even a nice lamp) without ANYTHING, and after umpteen years it takes a cop to get the kid some paper and crayons-

I mean, psychiatry is not nice, but this is ridiculous.


Sorry for bad English. X)

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It felt like they were trying to do a Jodie Foster ala Silence of the Lambs!

"Have you seen or touched any monkey's?" Monty, Late Show with David Letterman

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