Few of director William Friedkin’s films are as infamous as
his adaption of Dan Greenburg’s novel The
Nanny which became his film The Guardian (1990). Like Friedkin’s most famous film The
Exorcist, The Guardian delves into parental responsibility in a modern world
where both parents work outside the home and find themselves relying on a nanny
to help manage their home and take care of their newborn child.
Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell play the parents of a newborn
child who hire Camilla (Jenny Seagrove) to take care of their child when they
are away. Everything seems to be normal but the husband soon notices small
peculiarities with Camilla and her growing attachment to his child. It’s not long before the couple begin to
realize that Camilla is keeping secrets and has some very nefarious plans for
their child when he has reached the right age.
Friedkin’s film is polished and suspenseful and very
effective it’s first two thirds but tends to fall apart during the last third
of the film when it is revealed that Camilla is a druid who sacrifices newborns
to her God that lives within a tree in a forest. The concept is questionable and despite the
fact that it probably worked fine as a book Friedkin has a hard time making it
believable to an audience. It also
doesn’t help that the whole druid aspect of the story is explained at the
beginning of the film which lessens the possible thriller aspects of the
story. If there is no mystery, there is
no suspense so many of the set pieces of the loose their impact especially in
light of all the gore present in the film.
The film is not The Exorcist but it was a film that
Friedkin tried hard with (especially in
a time in which the horror genre was dominated by films with excessive gore)
and he did improve with his later film Bug.
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