good film but with many flaws

A Brilliant Conflict

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This movie was part of a multi DVD set. It's a boring satin/cult nonsense about a foreign nanny who tries to sacrifice a little girl on her birthday. The only thing of interest was the beginning when the imposter nanny killed the first girl. Then the imposter nanny's father, who knew that this girl was evil tried to find her. Everything else from the family interaction, to the mother's work relations, was basically garbage.This film had no right to be made. The idea is stupid. It's been done before. And the execution of whatever ideas they had were just cheese. Do not waste your time. It's not even funny. I couldn't even laugh at the movie itself. It was just boring.Rating, F, for Failure, 1 star.

Well I'm fully aware this was a TV-movie so I wasn't really expecting anything spectacular. Yet that beginning where a girl gets tricked into a dark laboratory by one of her colleagues and than the explosion setting everything on fire was quite well done. But of course I did know immediately that the wrong girl is going to work as au pair so there wasn't really a surprise there. I also knew that she was going to create chaos in the family. How she did that was in a rather unspectacular way however I quite liked how it drove the mother nuts. It was some kind of a slow burner. The problem however it really doesn't have any standout scenes. The role of the fake au pair's father is interesting so is the fake gardener. The fake au pair's motives remain pretty vague. The whole back story is told so quickly. The ending I thought it was rather lame and quite predictable. There also was some kind of epilogue which looked even sillier to me. It was enjoyable to watch once but forgettable as a whole.

We sort of know from the start that there's something wrong with the au pair moving into this American family. But the first hour of the film seems normal, like what's happening can be explained naturally. Which makes it even better when the supernatural plot unravels. The wife of the family doesn't like the au pair and at first the wife comes off as overly sensitive but then she's proved right. The sweet au pair has a bond with evil. The characters are well-played which makes the movie smooth. But on a final note, the end of the movie could have used a bit more horror, a bit more ultimatum. This movie is entertaining and well-scripted. It's far from Psycho (1960) but far from boring. Given that it's a movie made for TV it's quite alright.

I do not under stand all the bad talk about this movie; I mean come on! this was not intended as a hollywood block buster, it was made for lifetime TV. If you actually watch the movie closely or more than once, you will see that it is really kinda eerie. I watched this movie the very first time it was aired on october 1992 and have watched every rerun on lifetime since. I give it a solid 8 of 10