'The Wicker Man' Movie Review

I had no idea The Wicker Man remake was a comedy. You certainly can’t glean that info from the film’s trailer. Unintentionally hysterical and absurdly over-the-top, writer/director Neil LaBute may have had good intentions when he set out to revamp the classic 1973 thriller but we all know where good intentions sometimes lead, and hell is too gentle a destination for this film.

California police officer Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) watches a doll fall out of a car and chases down a station wagon to return the toy to the little girl in the back seat. Backing away from the car and reaching down to pick up the doll again after the girl deliberately tosses it out, Malus can only watch in horror as a huge truck slams into the vehicle. The car’s quickly engulfed in flames but Edward tries his best to get to the mother and daughter. His rescue attempts fail as the car explodes with its occupants trapped inside.

Still recovering from that tragedy, Edward Malus receives a letter from his ex-girlfriend Willow asking him to come to a private island called Summersisle off the coast of Washington to help find her missing daughter. Having absolutely no clue what he’s getting himself into, Edward travels to Summersisle unprepared for the bizarre community who call the island home.

Summersisle is populated by women who engage in ancient rituals, spend their days caring for the island’s main resource (honeybees), and treat men as second-class citizens. All the women are referred to as Sister This or Sister That, while the men are there only for heavy labor and to service the needs of the women – wink wink.

At this point, female audiences may believe Summersisle – other than the ancient rituals and the beekeeping stuff – doesn’t sound like such a bad place to visit. Ah, but it is. This is definitely one island that will never be featured in any tourism brochure. Unless you like your vacations to come complete with a little human sacrifice, you’d never want to accept an invitation to travel to Summersisle.

Officer Malus quickly figures out he’s in way over his head. These women are not to be trifled with yet Malus, a firm believer in the power of the law, continues to flash his badge believing that will actually cause the women to open up about the whereabouts of the young girl. He’s not even able to get his ex-flame Willow to give him any real leads to work off of. As Malus’ level of frustration rises, his actions become less like those of any trained law enforcement officer and more like a man stumbling around blindly in some creepy alternate universe.

After having wowed audiences with his performance in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, Nicolas Cage flounders on the screen in The Wicker Man. You have to wonder if Cage realized how ridiculous his character’s dialogue and actions were by the end of the shoot. Over the course of the film, Cage’s Malus loses more and more control of the situation. As his character grows more frustrated, actor Cage ramps up his performance which unfortunately only serves to make the scenes more ludicrous.

Cage’s Malus screams, waves his gun, beats up women, lands a few wicked karate kicks, and ultimately runs around like a crazy man in a bear suit – an absolutely ridiculous scene and one that had me on the verge of tears from laughing so hard. How did things go so horribly wrong?

Ellen Burstyn as the Queen Bee of the isle fares only slightly better than Cage. At least Burstyn’s spared much of the humiliation of having to utter massive amounts of silly dialogue by only being on screen maybe 15 or so minutes.

Kate Beahan’s performance as Willow can only be described as flat. If her character weren’t central to the plot, Beahan would probably fade into the background and never be noticed. There’s no chemistry whatsoever between Beahan and Cage; their characters never actually talk to each other so much as spout stilted dialogue toward one another.

The Bottom Line

LaBute’s PG-13 version doesn’t do justice to the source material. The writer/director has robbed the story of any suspense and sanitized the sexuality. In fact, LaBute should have written a climatic scene featuring anything other than a gigantic man made out of wicker and completely dropped The Wicker Man title.

My suggestion: watch the trailer for the ’06 Wicker Man, skip the theatrical release (and even the DVD), and check out the original film starring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward.

Grade: D-

The Wicker Man was directed by Neil LaBute and is rated PG-13 for disturbing images and violence, language and thematic issues.