The Guardian

Seventeen years after The Exorcist, director William Friedkin returns to the horror film genre with this ludicrous adaptation of Dan Greenburg's novel The Nanny. A young couple (Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell) take in a babysitter (Jenny Seagrove) who, it turns out, needs the blood of young children to continue being immortal. This "guardian" watches babies, steals them, and offers their bodies to this huge, gnarly, limb-waving tree. When a stranger follows the babysitter into the forest one night, and sees what appears to be some form of human-tree sex, the game is up. In a truly silly finale, the husband attacks the tree with a chainsaw, sending forth enough buckets of red paint to completely redecorate the Empire State Building before the "evil" is defeated. Woven throughout the story is the tale of "Hansel and Gretel," in the form of a picture book which the guardian reads to each new victim. What this classic fairy tale has to do with a woman who has a serious tree fetish is anybody's guess. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)