The Guardian (1990)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Good idea lost in the noise

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

(Credit IMDb) Phil and Kate have a baby boy named Jake. They hire a baby-sitter, Camilla, to look after Jake and she becomes part of the family. The Sheridan's friend and neighbor, Ned, takes a liking to Camilla and asks her out. She refuses, but Ned follows her and discovers that she is not quite human. Camilla discovers that she has been followed and Phil is pursued. He leaves a desperate message for Phil and Kate which reveals that Camilla has special plans for baby Jake. I hated this movie. Not only is it a chore to sit through with the tedious pace, it's inexplicably stupid as well. We are given no proper explanation as to why all these events are transpiring, nor do they bother to tell us why a damn tree is wreaking all this havoc. It's a tree!!!! Granted, they pulled it off in Evil Dead by making a tree look creepy, but not here. We also get no proper character development. I had no background on Phil & Kate, nor did it make me care, either. I had no idea why babies were suddenly being taken to this tree, or anything of that nature. The only good thing about this movie is the excellent performance of Jenny Seagrove as Camilla. She was downright creepy and very sexy as well. I relished every chance I got to see her on screen. You may recognize Carey Lowell as the Bond girl from License to Kill. But neither her, nor her partner Dwier Brown (Phil) managed to make me care about their fate. It has some gore, but not tons. We get a grisly impaling with a spike through the chest, a body burned alive, ripped off skin, severed limbs, blood splashes and more. Too bad I was too bored to care. I was confused throughout this movieFinal Thoughts: The guy who directed this, directed The Exorcist? Say it ain't so! It's rare to find these days, and you should keep it that way 3/10

The Guardian (1990)* 1/2 (out of 4) A text at the start of the movie tells us how Druids used to scarifies humans to trees. Flash forward to couple Phil (Dwier Brown) and Kate (Carey Lowell) who find themselves to proud parents to a new baby boy. They end up hiring a nanny named Camilla (Jenny Seagrove) not realizing that she's previously stolen babies and fed them to a tree in the woods.William Friedkin finally returned to the horror genre nearly two decades after his ground-breaking film THE EXORCIST. If you're going to watch this movie then it's best that you don't go in expecting another movie at the level of that one because THE GUARDIAN is pretty bad on many different levels. I think the idea of a woman giving babies to a tree for a scarifies is actually a pretty interesting idea but sadly the screenplay here just offers up predictable scene after another and in the end there's just nothing too thrilling here.The biggest problem is the screenplay because it's all quite predictable and I can honestly say that there's not a single thing that happens here that you don't expect. Take the sex scene between the husband and the wife. Don't you just know he's going to open his eyes and see the nanny as the one he's having sex with? There's the fact that the police don't believe the couple after they find out what's going on. These are just two examples of the predictable things that happen throughout.There are a few good moments that keep this from being a complete stinker. I thought Seagrove was very good in the role of the deadly woman. She's very believable as the "good" nanny but she's also quite seductive in the evil parts. Both Brown and Lowell are also good in their parts as is Brad Hall. I'd also say that the music score was quite effective and Friedkin did manage to create one very good sequence dealing with a man trapped inside his house with evil coming to him.The gore effects are also another major plus as they actually managed to get quite a bit past the MPAA. There are a couple memorable death scenes and I would add that the living tree was a very good effect and the scenes of it eating people were effective. Still, THE GUARDIAN just has too many issues with the story and the lack of any real scares really brings it down.

Jenny Seagrove is an attractive nanny who is actually a wicked druid tree priestess who needs the life-forces of newborn infants in order to preserve her powers (or something like that) in William Friedkin's failed but decent horror/thriller. Proud new parents, Jill and Kate think that their new nanny is the perfect woman until their friends start getting murdered and conspiracies about missing babies start to unfold. Due to plot contrivances and muddled intentions that make the action seem at times preposterous, this is considered by many as Friedkin's most worthless effort. Although, if folk/horror combined with some good, moody suspenseful kills and plenty of blood and eroticism, you won't go wrong. The film's best scene has an inquiring neighbor surrounded and circled by ravenous coyotes through his lavish, decor house just before he's ripped to pieces. Seagrove heads a pretty good cast if not always believable, but what do you expect from a story about a tree-witch that steals babies anyway? Enjoy it for what it is.

THE GUARDIAN seems like one of the more average achievements of master Friedkin–an urban Gothic tale, a grim fairy tale fostering the audiences' fear of the woods.Jenny Seagrove was a fine beauty and an average but interesting actress; here she gets to play 'Camilla', name of LeFanuesque resonance, and at least she offers something to glimpse at in her few nude scenes. The action keeps linear, the treatment will appear like quite unsubtle. A young and not very likable couple has a newborn son and hires a babysitter to look after him—the babysitter is Mrs. Seagrove. Very quickly Friedkin reveals that Jenny is a freak.