The Guardian

Pre dating The Hand That Rocks the Cradle by two full tree rings, this modern day Grimm's Fairy Tale is so chock full of reminders that it's modern that the sight of a thirty pound copy of Stephen King's It begins to feel like home. Pretty unsatisfying despite some great camera work. Friedkin's directing is solid as always but he was in too deep with this story. I also found some of Jenny Seagrove's acting to be wooden. I'll be here all night, folks.

This comes off like a schlocky TV movie, aided and abetted by some subpar acting and plotting. Imagine my disappointment when the Jenny Agutter I expected was actually Jenny Seagrove - Agutter would have been much better. Maybe Friedkin had forgotten how to make a good horror film? Strangely enough Exorcist III came out this year as well, and despite being no masterpiece itself, fares much better than this. Daft, with limited appeal.

While Friedkin manages to craft a few effective shock tableaux, he's fatally (to say nothing of fetally) burdened by a hack script, colorless characters, and an uninvolving mainstream milieu. The best segment details bland hero Brown's climactic chainsaw showdown with the killer tree, whose bark proves every bit as bad as its bite.

Great effects, great photography. The script was pretty half-baked but kind of added to the fun and come on, this has to be Friedkin's goriest movie. You're missing out if you don't check it at least once.

Even on auto pilot, Friedkin gets great effect out of weather and the huge picture windows in the homes. What makes it lackluster is that he doesn't seem particularly interested in the druids or their rituals, or going beyond dumb, bland staging to evoke any genuine sense of maternal peril. In a film he cared about, he would've spent more time on these details. Nonetheless, it's no worse than the schlockier, more forgettable selections from the late '80s, early '90s formula thriller canon.

This film occupies a unique place in cinematic history since it is so... pure. That is... there's not one interesting characterization, or idea. There's not one scary or suspenseful moment. There's not even one clever or witty line of dialogue. Friedkin, normally a reliable filmmaker, gives the audience absolutely, positively nothing with this motion picture. I'm surprised anyone even remembers this one, much less remember it enough to submit it to Criticker

on the first 15 mins i was puzzled by the weird tone and abrupt editing, it almost felt like a Mario Bava movie, but then it dawned on me what it was, the screenplay was really, really bad. Still a lot of fun though, that sort of bad movie that's interesting for how it doesn't work.Funny how two years later The Hand That Rocks the Cradle would come out and knock it out of the park with a more grounded take on The Guardian's undeveloped themes: a nanny usurping the parent's role in the family.

Laughable trash.

Estreava há 30 anos na Irlanda. Vi esse filme antes uma única vez por volta de 1993, na época me pareceu mesmo um filme assustador para meu olhar juvenil, mas pouca coisa havia guardado dele na memória. Foi um prazer ver a Versátil trazê-lo de volta ao meu radar, já que não é um dos mais bem reputados filmes do Friedkin, mas sem razão, é um filme que para bem em pé e que iniciou a febre dos anos 90 das babás from hell dos filmes de horror. Box Versátil OP Terror 13.

45.000

45.500

Slickly done and with an impressive turn from Seagrove, but anyone expecting another _Exorcist_ from Friedkin had best steer clear.

Bad Movie