The Guardian Review

• 12th Oct 2011

William Friedkin’s 1990 film The Guardian is a rather ridiculous effort from one of horror’s most famous directors. A limp attempt at playing on every parent’s worst nightmare, where a person entrusted with the care of a child betrays that trust and, in this case, feeds the baby to a tree. It’s a slightly bizarre take on the exploration of the innate, ingrained fear of the nanny and the resulting usurpation of the mother’s role; also a slightly strange plot direction, involving a druidic devotee (or indeed the dryad of the tree itself) sacrificing young children to the forest gods. While this sounds like a promising mix of the weird and horrific, it ends up being widely boring and silly.

Sketchy acting and pretty poor dialogue don’t help the situation. Carey Lowell’s Kate, mother to the endangered child, actually looks like she’s never even seen her baby before for a good portion of the film. This perhaps explains her odd reluctance to try and liberate her child from the evil nanny’s grasp on several occasions. Dwier Brown’s father cranks up the melodrama with plenty of shouting and racing about, but rarely adds any true suspense or dread. Even the naughty, tree-worshipping druid-nanny has barely any dramatic impact. Grinning smugly in a not particularly scary manner for most of her scenes; she is in fact barely creepy, exuding no sense of danger even when leading some mulleted ruffians to their death at the hands of her pet tree.  This semi-sentient bloodthirsty tree is actually the real star of the film. Skewering bad guys with murderous roots and branches are surely nods to the wonderful Evil Dead. But sadly, this is no Raimi. Sorely lacking any whiff of self awareness or humour, the film is, for the most part, a drab attempt at horror. The great finale, which is not quite worth sitting through the film for, has the enraged father attacking the vicious tree with a chainsaw all covered in baby blood.

Gaping holes in the plot see a couple, sorry TWO couples, willingly bugger off on holiday leaving their two-month-old child with an effective stranger: no references checked, no proof of identity. It’s utterly implausible that parents would leave their baby with an almost total stranger, even if she is quite nice-looking. Don’t blame the fact that we’re in a post-Madeleine McCann world for my incredulity, I’m sure there were plenty of child abductions/murders before then and I’m damn sure my parents didn’t hand me over to the first stranger that walked through the door whenever they wanted a night off.

Mishandled attempts to introduce dark fairytale elements to the story only result in showing just how far the film misses the mark, with no solid relationships forged between the mish-mash of fables, pre-Christian and Hellenic sources. Sporadic sexual overtones desperately suggestive of nature’s fecundity and power only succeed in being faintly repulsive. It could have been a good horror – a creepy film, with a smiling, creepy evil witch – but it only ends up being clunky and boring. All in all, it’s rammed together in a messy and aimless manner leaving one more than a little confused by its intentions, and disappointed by the lack of any form of fear induced. A shame, really. Not what I was expecting from the man who brought us that nigh-on perfect exercise in suspense, The Exorcist.

Hannah Turner