GL84 Following the birth of their son, a yuppie couple hires a mysterious nanny to care for him only for a series of strange incidents around them eventually causes them to believe that she's sacrificing babies to a spirit being and must race to stop her before she finishes.This was an overall decent effort without too much to really like here. One of the film's few positives here is the way this manages to really make the cult she's a part of seem like a creepy, mysterious entity. The first half here mainly comes off like a series of strange incidents around the house that don't really amount to much, yet all come together to build up a rather chilling concept here of the sacrificial cult. From the constant needling of the breastfeeding onto others, the way she always manages to wind up in the baby's care whenever something happens around them that could endanger them and the slow-burn way it leads into the revelation of her actual identity, so although there's not a whole lot of action here these scenes build up his feeling rather nicely. As well, there are some solid action scenes here featuring the group of thugs encountering her out in the woods and being drawn back to the killer trees which pick them off in rapid succession, the wolves stalking the one witness back to his house and forcing him back through all the different rooms before trapping him in a thrilling sequence and the finale in the woods is a lot of fun with the wolves ambushing them leading into the battle at the tree that gives this one a really frantic and exciting finish. Alongside the great and somewhat gorier kills than expected here, these here are what make this one enjoyable over the film's few flaws. It's two main problems are quite easy to spot and go hand-in-hand with each other, the cheesiness and its sheer ridiculousness. The ridiculousness of it might be its worst offense. There's no way that any of this could happened and the ability to keep it straight-faced and serious is a bit of a stretch to believe. Once it gets to the tree attack late in the film, then it gets too far out there to really become plausible. It just seems so out-of-place in a film about a psychotic nanny. The fact that the mystery surrounding her backstory is quite hard to get into all around and lacks just about any sense of cohesion also doesn't help since the entire concept of the cult is never given here and the only thing we get is their inherent creepiness to sustain us which doesn't last all that long. Though there are some that could be put off by the slow pace as well, as this doesn't move at the fastest point possible as well, these here are the whole of the film's problems.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Language, a mild sex scene and children-in-jeopardy.

meddlecore You know that when a movie begins with the introduction..."For thousands of years a religious order known as the Druids worshipped trees, sometimes even sacrificing human beings to them. To these worshippers, every tree has it's guardian spirit. Most are aligned with goodness and life, but some embody powers of darkness and evil." ...that it's probably not going to suck. And Friedkin certainly doesn't disappoint with this underrated cult gem (does he ever!?).Basically, an immortalized witch has made a pact- through sexual union- with a dark entity that resides in a giant old tree. In exchange for a youthful longevity, she must provide the tree with offerings in the form of a child under the age of 4 months (prior to some sort of metamorphic shift in the child's blood occurring). When presented to the tree, the child-offering is absorbed into it- as if carved into it.In order to obtain these child sacrifices, this woman- Camilla- uses stolen identities to garner herself positions, as a Nanny, through childcare agencies. And she has just been hired by the family we are following in this film.When she's not caring for the child,- or seducing the husband- Camilla is out having lustful intercourse with the tree, which is indicative of her reverence for, and union with, it. The tree also kills people. Yep, it's a killer tree that f*cks.And The kills are badass!!! Although there are not enough of them, in my personal opinion...the way it takes out that trio of rapists is amazing.I thoroughly enjoyed this, especially near the end when everything get's all evil dead-like (buddy even looks a bit like Ash when covered in blood and wielding that chainsaw)! The tree monster, though sparsely used, is pretty awesome. And there is just enough gore to keep interested through all the drama. Decent film! 6.5 out of 10.

movieman_kev Busy career-oriented, Phil and Kate decide to get a nanny for their two-week old newborn, however unbeknownst to them the one they pick, Carmilla, is a Hamadryad (google it) who feeds newborn babies to her favorite tree who happens to love her back, so that's mutual. Yea it's as ridicules as it sounds.What is, for all intents, simply a watchable gory b-movie schlock fest, would be an enjoyable enough time-killer if not for the mere fact that I hold William Friedkin of a higher caliber than that. With the sheer amount of brilliant films that he's made, I can't really help but think of this one as a misstep, one that turned out as a guilty pleasure, but a misstep nonetheless.My Grade: CEye Candy: Jenny Seagrove shows T&A multiple times. . Carey Lowell gets topless (might be a body double though)

Robert J. Maxwell Jenny Seagrove, whose beauty was positively pelagic in "Local Hero", is here a nanny hired by an upscale yuppie couple (Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell). She's still striking, sinewy and phocine, but the movie makes no sense whatever. It incorporates all kinds of generic devices, mostly from "The Omen," but, really, from all over the slasher area. The director, William Friedkin, has turned into one of those folk artists who assembles pieces of scrap iron and other detritus and welds them together into a sculpture so abstract that it loses all meaning except that of an assemblage of pieces of misshapen junk. And this from the guy who gave us "The Exorcist." Is it really necessary to outline this so-called plot? Okay, but briefly.Seagrove has these supernatural powers -- surprise! -- and has a pack of wolves to act as instruments of her will. She causes the death of the yuppies' first nanny choice, gets the job, moves in, and begins to take over the child. It's not clear why she has designs on the baby. Something to do with a sacred tree. She can cleanse her body of wounds at the tree and apparently sacrifices babies to it. Maybe the movie should have been called "Yggdrasil." That would have been the most original thing about it.You want nonsense? Here's nonsense. The baby is unnaturally quiescent. It respondeth not to stimuli. The baby is in a room in a hospital with a doctor bending over it ("maybe encephalitis", he mutters) and the two anxious parents clutching each other in the background. The nanny enters wreathlike into the room and goes to the little baby container. She stares down at the kid, murmurs "I can make you immortal," unplugs the leads from the EKG, and begins to walk out with the wrapped-up tike. The parents yank the kid from Seagrove's arms, push her to the floor, and scoot screeching out the door. So they're in a big hospital corridor, with docs and nurses and other staff walking around, and what do they do? They RUSH OUT and GO HOME! That's so Seagrove and the wolves or coyotes can find them and harass them further because it's not yet time for the movie to end and a few more shock scenes are required to make the quota.Two good points. (1) A couple of shots of Jenny Seagrove nude in the bathtub and being cured by the tree and standing by a brook in a moonlit glade. Very artistic, I thought. (2) The production design, which really IS good, and the photography. A pop-up illustration in a child's fairy tale book, evoking the frighteningly prickly forest that Hansel and Gretl stumble through, turns into the real thing. And that shot of Seagrove in the moonlight by the brook really IS impressive, despite the fact that you would search forever without finding a non-cultivated tree anywhere in the neighborhood of Los Angeles, never mind a spooky woodland. The rooms are unobtrusively decorated with prickly plants and various cacti. Nicely done and giving evidence of having some thought put into it, which the screenplay lacks.