GL84 Following the birth of their son, a yuppie couple hires a mysterious nanny to care for him only for a series of strange incidents around them eventually causes them to believe that she's sacrificing babies to a spirit being and must race to stop her before she finishes.This was an overall decent effort without too much to really like here. One of the film's few positives here is the way this manages to really make the cult she's a part of seem like a creepy, mysterious entity. The first half here mainly comes off like a series of strange incidents around the house that don't really amount to much, yet all come together to build up a rather chilling concept here of the sacrificial cult. From the constant needling of the breastfeeding onto others, the way she always manages to wind up in the baby's care whenever something happens around them that could endanger them and the slow-burn way it leads into the revelation of her actual identity, so although there's not a whole lot of action here these scenes build up his feeling rather nicely. As well, there are some solid action scenes here featuring the group of thugs encountering her out in the woods and being drawn back to the killer trees which pick them off in rapid succession, the wolves stalking the one witness back to his house and forcing him back through all the different rooms before trapping him in a thrilling sequence and the finale in the woods is a lot of fun with the wolves ambushing them leading into the battle at the tree that gives this one a really frantic and exciting finish. Alongside the great and somewhat gorier kills than expected here, these here are what make this one enjoyable over the film's few flaws. It's two main problems are quite easy to spot and go hand-in-hand with each other, the cheesiness and its sheer ridiculousness. The ridiculousness of it might be its worst offense. There's no way that any of this could happened and the ability to keep it straight-faced and serious is a bit of a stretch to believe. Once it gets to the tree attack late in the film, then it gets too far out there to really become plausible. It just seems so out-of-place in a film about a psychotic nanny. The fact that the mystery surrounding her backstory is quite hard to get into all around and lacks just about any sense of cohesion also doesn't help since the entire concept of the cult is never given here and the only thing we get is their inherent creepiness to sustain us which doesn't last all that long. Though there are some that could be put off by the slow pace as well, as this doesn't move at the fastest point possible as well, these here are the whole of the film's problems.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Language, a mild sex scene and children-in-jeopardy.

FlashCallahan Phil and Kate have a baby boy, Jake. They hire a nanny, Camilla, to look after Jake and she becomes part of the family.Their friend and neighbour, Ned, takes a liking to Camilla and asks her out. She refuses, but Ned follows her and discovers that she is not who she says she is.Camilla discovers that she has been followed after he leaves a message for Phil and Kate which reveals that Camilla has special plans for baby Jake.....William Freidkin is a wonderful director, because quite often he pulls no punches when he decides to go visceral with his film making. There is always an air of excitement when he announces a new project. But there are the odd occasions when even he can fall flat on his face.Here's a prime example.Knowing the wonderful way The Exorcist impacted cinema-goers prior to this, the idea of him directing another child in peril horror must have seemed like a license to print money, with an even greater chance seeing that the third Exorcist film was released the same year.But no, this is just another yuppy in peril film, that's more like a supernatural Hand That Rocks The Cradle, rather than the director's legacy.The problem is that Seagrove just isn't terrifying enough as the titular villain, and ironically, she is just too wooden. all she does is stare at people slightly perturbed, and speaks with that jolly hockey stick accent that Hollywood loves to give a villain.It almost feels like Michael Winner had a hand at making this, because the camera does nothing more than loom on Seagrove for an awkwardly long time, and forgets to do the most important thing a film has to do.Entertain.But it does have the best tree cutting tree scene cinema has ever seen.

Stephanie Lilitu Blackthorne I remember being in high school my senior year and "The Guardian" was released to home video in 1990 but the year I saw it was 1992. I think also around that time "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle" was also released after it's run in theaters. It was the usual weekend ritual, two movies and a Nintendo/Super Nintendo game from Movie Warehouse and nothing else to do but veg out.So I rented both "Guardian" and "Hand" as my movies for that "Evil Nanny" themed weekend and watched "The Guardian" first. I must say that the movie is one of the most underrated horror films ever made. Friedkin's first horror film since "Exorcist" 17 years after. At first the eerie score let's the viewer know it is a scary film with a brief story about druids worshiping trees and offering sacrifices to them, an obvious mutilation of the druid's customs of nature worship as the antagonists is rather a forest demon or possible succubus.Now, some what of a spoiler warning: We see what transpires at the beginning while a boy reads "Hansel & Gretel", giving the viewer an idea of the nanny's intentions after his parents leave him and his sister with her, as "Hansel & Gretel" is a classic Brothers Grimm story about children abandoned and taken in by a stranger with intentions of sacrifice.Jenny Seagrove's portrayal of Camilla shows that she keeps her maternal instincts to herself while caring for the child but hides her true intent and anyone who discovers her true form will not live long or be heard from again, let alone anyone who crosses her path like the witch in "Hansel & Gretel" (Of course, this is the classic horror concept of a witch and not modern day pagans or wiccans... or druids).This film is hated by the critics but loved by many a film nut. I like it but not enough for a full score because it moves kind of quickly. It wasn't a slasher or a big sfx filled film but it holds up because it is scary and at one point you are routing for Camilla and then routing for the parents.I can see one reason why the critics hated it, the story is easy to follow. And another reason they hate it is because Friedkin knew he couldn't give us another "Exorcist" and horror was not really his specialty when it came to previous works like "The French Connection", "Sorcerer" and "Crusing". It is still a movie I enjoy watching every now and then and I think you would like it too, but don't take my word for it as other users have their opinions.And I thought the Kite Eating tree in the peanuts comics gave me nightmares.

Robert J. Maxwell Jenny Seagrove, whose beauty was positively pelagic in "Local Hero", is here a nanny hired by an upscale yuppie couple (Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell). She's still striking, sinewy and phocine, but the movie makes no sense whatever. It incorporates all kinds of generic devices, mostly from "The Omen," but, really, from all over the slasher area. The director, William Friedkin, has turned into one of those folk artists who assembles pieces of scrap iron and other detritus and welds them together into a sculpture so abstract that it loses all meaning except that of an assemblage of pieces of misshapen junk. And this from the guy who gave us "The Exorcist." Is it really necessary to outline this so-called plot? Okay, but briefly.Seagrove has these supernatural powers -- surprise! -- and has a pack of wolves to act as instruments of her will. She causes the death of the yuppies' first nanny choice, gets the job, moves in, and begins to take over the child. It's not clear why she has designs on the baby. Something to do with a sacred tree. She can cleanse her body of wounds at the tree and apparently sacrifices babies to it. Maybe the movie should have been called "Yggdrasil." That would have been the most original thing about it.You want nonsense? Here's nonsense. The baby is unnaturally quiescent. It respondeth not to stimuli. The baby is in a room in a hospital with a doctor bending over it ("maybe encephalitis", he mutters) and the two anxious parents clutching each other in the background. The nanny enters wreathlike into the room and goes to the little baby container. She stares down at the kid, murmurs "I can make you immortal," unplugs the leads from the EKG, and begins to walk out with the wrapped-up tike. The parents yank the kid from Seagrove's arms, push her to the floor, and scoot screeching out the door. So they're in a big hospital corridor, with docs and nurses and other staff walking around, and what do they do? They RUSH OUT and GO HOME! That's so Seagrove and the wolves or coyotes can find them and harass them further because it's not yet time for the movie to end and a few more shock scenes are required to make the quota.Two good points. (1) A couple of shots of Jenny Seagrove nude in the bathtub and being cured by the tree and standing by a brook in a moonlit glade. Very artistic, I thought. (2) The production design, which really IS good, and the photography. A pop-up illustration in a child's fairy tale book, evoking the frighteningly prickly forest that Hansel and Gretl stumble through, turns into the real thing. And that shot of Seagrove in the moonlight by the brook really IS impressive, despite the fact that you would search forever without finding a non-cultivated tree anywhere in the neighborhood of Los Angeles, never mind a spooky woodland. The rooms are unobtrusively decorated with prickly plants and various cacti. Nicely done and giving evidence of having some thought put into it, which the screenplay lacks.