"When does it become a kidnapping?" John (Chestnut) and Laura (Hall) Taylor are desperate for a baby, but are unable to conceive. After years of trying they finally have found a willing surrogate and things are falling into place. Little but little things start to change and the surrogate becomes obsessed with John and everything is threatened. This is a hard movie to review. First thing I will say is that the movie is tense and dramatic. The only downside is that this is the same type of movie that has been told over and over and over. Movies like Obsessed, No Good Deed, Perfect Man….all have the same idea and while they are all good the idea is getting old and to the point of being able to know exactly what will happen. That, for me, ruins a movie more than anything. Being able to stay one step ahead in a mystery movie ruins the enjoyment. Overall, not a bad movie, but needed something to make it seem original instead of repetitive and generic. I give this a low B-.

There is some decent talent involved. The premise for the story intrigued and sounded quite good, regardless of its lack of originality. The cover gave the sense it would be fairly suspenseful and interesting. 'When the Bough Breaks' was definitely not a film that sounded like it was going to be a disaster hearing about it.

It as a film is still not that much of a disaster too, there are merits here. The decent potential shown initially is sadly not sustained and generally not lived up to, so sadly 'When the Bough Breaks' is not a particularly good film either. As indicated just now, there was no initial bias against it or wanting to dislike it at all. Far from the truth, actually thought it had potential to be an unexceptional but not too bad film. It was a real shame it wasn't that, but it could have been so much worse.

'When the Bough Breaks' does have good elements. The acting from Regina Hall, Michael K. Williams and Morris Chestnut is better than average, Chestnut actually being quite good and suitably intensely brooding. Definitely the best thing about the film. The production values are not too cheap and the music is ominous without being too intrusive or obvious.

First impressions were a promising start that did intrigue and had some slow-burning suspense.

Sadly, that slow-burning suspense was far from sustained all the way through. 'When the Bough Breaks' generally lacks tension, danger and suspense, hurt by that it treads familiar ground so often that any surprises or anything new cannot be seen. The characters fail to be interesting and don't have much to make one endear to them, it was purposeful for some but don't think that was intent for all of them to be so. The direction does well with the visuals but in terms of the storytelling it fails, being pedestrian in a lot of the first half and then losing control in the second. It gets melodramatic in places and should have been much bolder, for a film with this concept it was rather tame.

Promising beginning aside, the first half is on the dull side. As said by others while the second half does pick up things start getting silly, rushed and implausible, some of it making one feel stupid, culminating in an ending that ends too suddenly and almost unfinished-like. The dialogue is cheesy and very difficult to take seriously, also not flowing naturally. Jaz Sinclair seemed out of her element and doesn't have the chops to carry the lead role and the film, while Theo Rossi is awful, no engagement whatsoever.

Concluding, not terrible but also not good. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Sure, while everyone else in the critical world seems to be off at TIFF, I'll just stay behind here and watch the swill that gets put in the trough... and now I'm talking to myself. That-that's chaos theory.

It's amazing how with such low expectations When the Bough Breaks manages to surprise with how dull and bloodless most of it is (not to mention being a weak PG-13 when it could just go all out for adults with an R), and then when it needs to bring the insanity it completely drops the ball, miserably. The only decent thing I can say about the whole thing is that Morris Chestnut is trying, but that doesn't mean much when he is given such a script that is an insult to boilers and plates.

My wife informs me that there are actually two other Lifetime movies about surrogate crazy women who are picked by a Happy-Married-Couple(TM), and this does NOT include last year's quasi-satire of these movies as well as Lifetime in general, Will Ferrell & Kristin Wigg's A Deadly Adoption. I'm not sure how these stack up with those filler in-between diaper and make-up commercials (according to her, an avid watcher of those movies for guilty pleasure reasons, this ranks as the worst), but on its own its key problem is that it is written by a guy who has no problem plugging away with the formula and generic beats that come with a story like this - set-up where everything seems fine except for the nasty abusive boyfriend of the surrogate woman (easily a highlight of the movie, but in it too briefly before he's called back as a regular goon in Gotham City) - until he tries to ambiguity for how we feel about this pregnant psycho-hose-beast.

We're force-fed backstory about this young woman, this at around the 2/3rd mark (because of course, and sadly featuring Michael K Williams who doesn't seem to want to be here, and who can blame him), and it doesn't make sense with the rest of how the story unfolds. The information should/could be used perhaps to give us some sympathy for her, or that the husband, who she is trying to seduce, can turn the tables now that he knows who she really is. Neither of these things happen. This info dump turns out to be basically useless, telling us "this bitch is crazy y'all!" but we know this already from after about 20 minutes in. All we're left with them is the last act of Fatal Attraction, and trust me, I wasn't going in expecting that (though I should've by this f***ing point), and yet it doesn't have much madness or fire in its belly to make it a guilty pleasure in any real way.

Because of its dullness it also feels every single one of its 107 minutes - far too long for something that is in essence a weaker version of other *TV movies meant for the lowest discerning denominator* - and except for Chestnut, who also executive produced, this is full of weak and hot air. A shame since, perhaps with a stronger script or a less lazy director, there could be more for newcomer Jaz Sinclair, who has screen presence and chemistry with Chestnut in her scenes with him. Once you know every single step this is going to go, and any potential campy elements are knocked off far too early, it's counting down the minutes till it gets to where it's gonna get to.

It's a piece of Cheese-Filler, and though less ambitious still not quite as awful as Warcraft (current #1 worst of for this year), but it's close enough.