The Guardian on AllMovie

The Exorcist director William Friedkin made a return to the horror genre with this blend of straightforward suspense and Druid myth-inspired horror-fantasy. The idyllic lives of yuppie couple Phil and Kate (Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell) seem complete when they select the winsome young Camilla (Jenny Seagrove) as a live-in nanny for their newborn child, but the lovely young Camilla -- whose natural sexuality begins to work its spell on Phil -- is not what she appears to be. This becomes shockingly apparent to the audience early in the story when she is set upon by a trio of rape-minded thugs who meet with a particularly nasty fate in the woods, but it seems to take the parents much longer to come to the same conclusion. In fact, the woods are the key to the entire equation, as Camilla is revealed to be a powerful forest entity from Druid mythology who intends to sacrifice her infant charge to a hideous tree-god.