Cradle of Deception (hereinafter CoD) is a movie “inspired by true events” that culminates in a fistfight between a heroic journalist and an evil doctor — because that’s how conflicts are resolved in real life.
Young widow Erin Treadwell (Holly Deveaux) gives birth to baby boy Ben through in vitro fertilization. Ben is soon diagnosed with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), necessitating a life-saving bone marrow transplant. This is a rare genetic disease that, somewhat paradoxically, is actually quite popular. You’ll recognize it by its street name: bubble boy disease.
CoD wisely avoids the bubble boy connection, which would have made it impossible to take the film seriously. Unfortunately, the script approaches the disease overall as little more than a plot device, although an admittedly clever one.
To widen her search for a donor, Erin contacts the local newspaper, the Willowvale Bugle (so much for taking shit seriously). Ace reporter Charlie Allen (Matthew James Dowden) finds Erin’s story “familiar.” “Another couple needed something similar for their kid last year. They also got IVF at Blessed Beginnings.” That’s the clinic headed by Dr. Jackson Walker (Jason Cermak).
The movie doesn’t quote the figure, but the frequency of SCID is 1 in 50,000 to 100,000 (for its X-linked form), so the fact that two neighboring babies conceived at the same clinic have it would be too much of a coincidence, which of course it isn’t.
You know where this is going. CoD is really about insemination fraud, which is no less a delicate issue than SCID and certainly provides more sensationalistic material for a thriller. I just wish both topics had been given a balanced, objective treatment.
A doctor tells Erin, “I can’t downplay how serious this is,” but downplay it is exactly what the screenplay does. For example, we’re told that “with the type of SCID Ben is suffering from, the only treatment is [as mentioned above] bone marrow transplant.” Okay, but there are at least nine different types, so which one would Ben’s be?
And the answer is, he has the movie type. The kind that presents practically no symptoms other than impending death. Dying is a definite possibility, but you don’t just drop dead. This is a condition that leaves you wide open to all sorts of infectious diseases and their corresponding symptoms. A silent killer, this isn’t.
However, pretty much everything pertaining to Ben’s sickness and treatment happens on the periphery. It takes a backseat to Jackson’s machinations, which are as exaggerated as SCID is understated.
There is an undeniable factual precedent for behavior such as Jackson’s, and not much more of an explanation for it than what the film offers. Now, as you might expect from individuals so concerned with creating life, Jackson’s real-world counterparts are not murderers.
Jackson, on the other hand, has no compunction about killing anyone he deems a threat to his secret, all with the complicity of the “head office.” As Jackson’s wife explains it, “the clinic didn’t want to lose their star doctor … There’s so much at stake that I know the board would do just about anything to keep the truth from coming out.”
I know corporations are supposed to be nefarious and profit-driven, but come on. For starters, guys like Jackson usually run their own independent clinics. Second, a board of directors would undoubtedly want to keep this stuff quiet, but they would also be very likely to cut Jackson loose as too much of a liability.
All of the above notwithstanding, the truth is that CoD kept me watching (in particular before the cloak-and-dagger conspiracy bullshit), and that’s about all you can ask from the audiovisual equivalent of an airport novel. The suspense wasn’t exactly killing me, but it did kill 90 minutes and I got 600-plus words out of it to boot.