The Power of Trees Compels You

When the director of The Exorcist makes a universally panned dud about a killer tree that’s only on Instant Watch for another day, you might as well cancel all my appointments. It was time to watch William Friedken’s The Guardian.

Quick Plot: A brief title card informs us that during Druidic times, people worshiped trees.

That’s that.

Cut to the present day, where a pair of parents are on their way out for the weekend. This is clearly quite convenient for the mysterious nanny who uses the break as the perfect chance to take her newborn charge into the woods and sacrifice him to a giant Sleepy Hollow-esque tree.

I’ll say it once: prospective nannies’ references should be checked more thoroughly than pretty much anything you’ve ever thought to check in your life, be that taxes, your bakery line number, or whether or not you remembered to put on deodorant before leaving the house.

Fast forward to a new happy couple played by Law & Order’s Carey Lowell and one of the minor characters in two of my favorite sports movies (Field of Dreams and The Cutting Edge, and yes, figure skating is a sport or would you like to try it yourself?), Dwier Brown. Phil and Kate, as they are called, are forced to hire a live-in babysitter when they decide to rent a modern house out of their means, since Kate has to return to work in order to help pay the rent. After a token montage necessary for any movie with job interviews, the couple decide on a young gym teacher in the making.

Except then she ends up dead.

Choice number 2, luckily, is a sexier Mary Poppins named Camilla. Before you can sing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Camilla is showing up in Phil’s sexy dreams and lecturing Kate about how breastfeeding will keep her baby pure. What she doesn’t say, at least not out loud, is that Baby Jake needs to save his purity so that he makes a better human sacrifice to Camilla’s tree boyfriend.

As much as the idea of a killer tree may SEEM the culprit for The Guardian’s sour reputation, it’s really more the lack of suspense that damns it into unfortunate territory. We know from the very first lullabye that Camilla wants to feed Jake to the woods, which wouldn’t be terrible if we didn’t ALSO know that we were in the hands of one of cinema’s all-time greats.

Truthfully, The Guardian isn’t nearly as laughable as one might expect when watching a cross between The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (before that was a thing) and Little Otik. The opening baby sacrifice is actually quite disturbing, and the whole cast is solid enough to sell most of the material with a straight face. We get coyotes eating nerds, trees decapitating middle-aged punks, and branches wrapping themselves around their victims like an anaconda on Owen Wilson. So in terms of ridiculous killing styles, The Guardian is kind of awesome.

It’s just also…kinda…eh…hmm. Muddled could be a good word. The shaky marriage between domestic Fatal Attraction-like thriller with the whole, you know, woman worshiping a killer tree just never meshes in a way that feels, dare I say it, organic. It’s obvious that there were script and production woes (I doubt we’ll get a proud Friedken commentary should The Guardian ever make it to Blu Ray) and while the pedigree behind the film makes it superior to a lot of rival horror films, it’s still an uncomfortable combination of too many hard to handle elements.

High Points 

Jenny Seagrove makes for a surprisingly believable sexy tree hugging nanny, something I assume is hard to because thus far, even Meryl Streep hasn't attempted that feat (and yes, that's a challenge) 

Maybe it's just a sign of the times, but I enjoyed the 'switch' of having the husband be the one accused of paranoid hysteria. From the 90s to now, most of these kinds of films always want to use the crutch of maternal instinct and the fact that it's more believable for the world to NOT believe a raging mother. Considering how easy it would have been to have Carey Lowell's character blend jealousy with fear, it's a refreshing gender swap.

Low Points

On one hand, the big thug massacre is big and gory and kind of kickass. On the other, I'm probably just saying that because it involved laughable 45 year old schoolyard bullies and death by dummy

Lessons Learned

If you don’t want anyone to know that you sustained a gigantic gash on your tummy, perhaps you should be safe and not wear a flimsy white blouse when the wound is still fresh

No matter how many babies you feed a superevil ancient tree, all it takes is one chainsaw to show it who’s boss

When reporting a series of supernatural events to a dubious police detective, you might want to leave out some of the less important and more unbelievable elements, like how the woman who tried to sacrifice your baby to a tree could also fly 

The Winning Line

“She has an accent...European I think, British maybe.”

Now I could understand someone mistaking a Belgian accent for French or Scottish for Irish, but…well…I guess Britain IS in Europe…

Look! It’s…

Candyman’s jerky professor Xander Berkely popping up in the film’s last reel to play a detective

Nostalgic ‘90s Alert!

“I love you, Roseanne Barr,” jokes Phil to his (not really) chubbily pregnant wife. Savvy Roseanne fans can easily date The Guardian by the fact that she still had a last name.

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Guardian is certainly an interesting watch, both for Friedken fans who can’t shake the curiosity of watching him tackle killer trees and horror nerds who, you know, just love when ANYONE tackles killer trees. It’s not a hidden gem or so-bad-it’s-wonderful campfest, but for a 1990 horror film with a bad reputation, it’s not boring to watch. Plus, you know...killer trees.

NERD ALERT! Shock Value

If you're even a ticket stub-size as movie nerdy as I am, then you're most likely always on the lookout for a good physical BOOK (remember those?) about genre film. There are the personal library shelf standards--Carol Clover’s Men Women & Chainsaws, Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies or the Joe Bob Briggs canon, to name a few--along with less impressive works, generally those that aim for unworthy self-importance or offer nothing more than tidbits gleamed from a director commentary track.

TLC Book Tours sent me, and many of my favorite fellow film bloggers Jason Zinoman’s new book, Shock Value, now available from Penguin Press. Focusing on a handful of auteurs who helped shape horror as we know it today, Zinoman explores how American horror of the late 1960s and 1970s evolved past its playful, mostly innocent roots into something realer, bleaker, and deeper.

Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon, George Romero, Roman Polanski, William Friedken and Brian De Palma get the most attention as Zinoman’s writing shapes just how they came to make their flagship films. Yes, some of the anecdotes have been heard before in interviews and DVD extras, but Zinoman lays it out in a manner that's both comprehensive and interesting, lending insight into how everything from Craven’s strained relationship with his Christian mother to Hooper’s experience documenting a shooting victim’s death in an ER led to such creations as Last House On the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Virtually every horror fan with a DVD player knows about William Shatner's connection to Michael Meyers, but most have never learned the decades-long saga of John Carpenter’s frenemy-like relationship with his one-time collaborator and pal, the late Dan O’Bannon. O’Bannon, the superbrain behind Alien and creator of Return of the Living Dead, might very well be one of horror and science fiction’s most important figures of all time, yet it’s rare that the writer/director gets his due. Unlike most of the other directors on profile, Zinoman follows a large chunk of O’Bannon’s career, including everything from his work on Dark Star to how his Crohn’s disease birthed (pun sorta intended) one of cinema’s scariest scenes of all time. It’s refreshing to get a fair and multi-faceted portrait of a criminally underrated talent, even if it means making Carpenter, long-time hero of genre fans, come off as, well, a bit of a jerk.

For the other filmmakers, Zinoman narrows his focus to their earlier work, using the common misconception of Hitchock’s grandfatherly status in the new wave of horror as a starting point. "As influential as he was, the notion that Hitchcock is the inventor of the modern horror genre is overstated," Zinoman claims, citing the explanatory nature of Psycho’s coda as the exact opposite of what the Shock Value subjects did with their own nihilistic spins. The Exorcist is commonly referenced as the key representative of this brand of horror, but I’d never quite heard how Friedken’s interest in the work of minimalist playwright Harold Pinter lent so much to general structure and ambiguity of the film (something author William Blatty fought against and lost until the special edition released 20 years later). 

Some territory has been well-tread, including a few morally dubious tricks Polanski used on Mia Farrow during Rosemary’s Baby and how Gunnar Hanson was so miserable while playing Leatherface that he actually found himself wanting to hurt Marilyn Burns’ Sally. What Zinoman does well with some commonly-known facts is put them in context. To explain the evolution of how Rosemary’s Baby went from a gimmick-ready William Castle film to the Oscar winning classic it became while following it up with an examination of Peter Bogdanovich’s controversial yet rarely discussed Boris Karloff vehicle Targets helps to create a dynamic timeline of the new horror cinema.

A writer for the New York Times, Jason Zinoman clearly knows and cares for genre films, and it’s refreshing to hear a balanced but passionate voice on the subject. Though  his closing chapters feel a tad too dismissive of modern horror, Zinoman does make a strong case for just why these titans of blood and guts will probably never quite be matched. It’s not that their films are perfect (in fact, even the author seems to objectively point out one issue or another with virtually all of the touchstones on display here) but the mere combination of U.S. culture and the newfound independent market simply gave way to a type of filmmaking that tapped into something deeper than ever before or, so far, since. “These are movies that want to confuse you, in part because getting lost focuses the attention on the terror of uncertainty,” writes Zinoman. “They endure, like great art does.”

Shock Value isn’t the end-all for genre studies, but those on the lookout for a good read on the subject will most certainly find some new nuggets worthy of exploration. While there's plenty of ground around and within the films that could still use some attention, the book provides an interesting thesis on the development of modern horror while also offering a few new perspectives on classic and underlooked films.  It may also give you plenty to argue with, so pack some post-its in your beach bag and enjoy some summer reading the right way.

Forest of (Boredom to) Death

We’ve all seen M. Night Shamalaongadong’s The Happening. We’ve all learned the wonders of SCIENCE! and the horror of DYING BEES! and non-importance of sharing TEERAMEESUE! and, perhaps most importantly, the absolute wonders of something called a HOT DOG. If The Happening has done anything of note in the 21st century, that something is make it far easier for any other film to feature evil flora and come off with at least one compliment:

It’s better than The Happening.

Marky Mark almost always agrees with that statement

Quick Plot: An unusual forest is becoming home to a gaggle of suicides and a vicious rape-murder. When an investigating detective dies of a heart attack under the trees, a flighty reporter named May launches an exploitive news series on the forest’s mystical hauntings, trying her darnest to rein in some help from her botanist boyfriend Shu-Hoi, an obsessive man who’d rather carry out experiments in his greenhouse. A dead-serious female detective named Ha (stop it, it’s not funny) jumps on the case with some help from Shu-Hoi, dragging the sleazy suspected rapist into the woods with a gang of reporters where the trees somehow drag out a hilarious, condom-eating confession.

That’s about the first hour of Forest of Death, though it feels akin to three weeks and half a Monday. This is a slowwwwwww film. And not an overly interesting one, despite the promise of evil forestry, ghosts, rape, and condom snacks. 

The idea of a botanist hero is fun. But Shu-Hoi is not. He’s a handsome enough scientist, but saddle the poor nerd with a shrewish Gale Weathers-lite girlfriend and it’s hard to really like him. As Detective Ha, Shu Qi is easily the most interesting character onscreen, but it’s a shame that the film feels the need to hint at a relationship that’s never actually there between her and Shu-Hoi. It’s like Forest of Death made a bold decision to feature a strong female center, then remembered she was attractive and hence warranted a tepid love triangle. It’s somewhat insulting.

There’s also the matters of storytelling and pacing, something Forest of Death seems to make up as it goes along. Once the main crime is resolved (rather hilariously, might I add), the film just kind of limps along for another half hour. It’s as if you entered a wave pool where the waves were REALLY rough, then it was time to turn it off and you hung out, eventually realizing the waves would never come back on because the person that pushes the wave button is taking a really long lunch. So you leave. And the credits roll. And Emily is left feeling very unhappy.

High Points

I like the idea of these three stories--Ha’s investigation, May’s sensationalist reporting and Shu-Hoi’s plant talking--and how they could interweave. It’s certainly not a bad starting point for a film...

Low Points

...except Forest of Death never does anything interesting at all with them

Lessons Learned

Hong Kong journalists are, on average, 17 years old

Post-coital secret sharing only works when you or your partner enjoy the coitus

Lab plants dig a good funky beat

Rent/Bury/Buy

Meh. I watched Forest of Death because it was expiring on Instant Watch and now that it’s gone, good riddance. This isn’t an awful or incompetent movie, but I personally kind of sorta really did hate it. Slow, plodding, aimless, and somehow unoriginal despite being about lie detecting plants. Hardcore Asian horror enthusiasts might still appreciate some of its aspects, but I’d much rather pop in Little Shop of Horrors and recall my childhood crush on Rick Moranis than sit through this one again. 

Then again, I kind of ALWAYS want to watch Little Shop of Horrors and moon over Rick Moranis’ adorableness, so perhaps that’s an unfair comparison. Here’s a better one: I’d rather watch William Friedken stumble all over a tree lover-themed horror film in The Guardian than rewatch Forest of Death. 

Heck, I’d rather watch William Friedken eat a condom than rewatch this movie. I’d rather--

I’ll stop before I say something illegal. We’ll leave the last word to Oscar nominee Marky Mark: