The Guardian (1990)

Awesome Movie

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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.

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.

A slow first half gives way to an exciting second in this oddball horror flick from EXORCIST director William Friedkin. The theme of evil nannies is nothing new - Hammer did it in 1965 with Bette Davis in THE NANNY, while Rebecca De Mornay was memorably evil in 1992's THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, and the plot is set up slowly before the second half kicks in - and it's a real kicker.Jenny Seagrove at first appears seductively innocent and beautiful (and is more than happy to strip off for her role and frequently does), but soon becomes the evil demon that she really is, while she is given able support by the actors playing the parents caught up in the horrific events. Miguel Ferrer, the scuzzy businessman in ROBOCOP, has a small role as a family friend while Xander Berkeley is on hand as a laconic policeman.The good parts of this film are those which concentrate on the killer tree itself, which is a pretty novel concept which was explored in FROM HELL IT CAME and THE EVIL DEAD, but has never been centre stage in this sense before. Whether it's eating children or whipping bad guys to death with a sharp branch, the tree really is the star of the show. The best part of this film is by far the amusing ending, where the father, dressed in a ripped, bloody blue shirt and carrying a red chainsaw, fights the tree in a scene which is somewhat similar to EVIL DEAD 2.Yes, this man becomes Bruce Campbell. The scenes where he chainsaws the tree and blood sprays out are startling and, it has to be said, hilarious, and it's just a shame that the rest of the film wasn't like this. That said, it's definitely a passable exercise in fear, and with Friedkin as director, THE GUARDIAN is enjoyable fun (with an admittedly ridiculous premise) which maintains the interest throughout.

When professional couple Phil and Kate (Dwier Brown and Bond-babe Carey Lowell) appoint pretty Camilla (Jenny Seagrove) as live-in nanny to their newborn son Jake, little do they realise that the hired help is actually the guardian spirit of an ancient, evil tree that feeds on month-old babies.Precisely how an English wood spirit came to care for a malevolent tree in California is never really addressed (I'm guessing that she would need a Green Card); neither is the small matter of how Camilla continually manages to find victims within walking distance of her wooden ward without rousing suspicion (no-one seems to 'twig' her strange behaviour). Indeed, there are many questions thrown up by the rather preposterous script.Thankfully, such posers did little to diminish my enjoyment of William Friedkin's freakish fairy-tale, the director's slick, straight-faced approach to his material providing firm enough roots from which to grow an effective and fun-packed fear-flick. With plenty of atmosphere, one or two well-crafted moments of tension, an eerie central performance from Seagrove (who also provides the film with plenty of welcome nudity), the occasional spot of OTT gory mayhem, and an enjoyably silly finalé that sees Phil getting chainsaw-happy with the baby-eating tree, I found it easy to forgive The Guardian's obvious flaws.