Burn Baby Burn
The Wicker Man Remake
begs to be sacrificed.
BY GREGORY
While I could no more, in good conscience, recommend The Wicker Man Remake than I could, say, snap my fingers
and make all of Hollywood’s stupid CG animals go away, I shall nonetheless -- in the manner of professional partnerships
and romantic relationships -- do my best to say a few nice things about the project as I blast it from the sky and stomp it
into a smouldering ruin.
First and foremost, The Wicker Man Remake (as it simply must be called) is allegedly based upon the screenplay (by
Anthony Shaffer) of The Wicker Man -- Robin Hardy’s beautiful, seminal motion picture from 1973 (no, my online
friends, it is not “from the ‘60s”) which, yes, happens to be one of my favourite films. I love it so much that its
naysayers simply are not welcome in my house…if I had a house.
Since this review concerns The Wicker Man Remake and not The Wicker Man, let us leave the current appraisal of the
original film at this: It is a one-of-a-kind gem -- superior, thriller-fans, to your Psycho, your Exorcist, your Shining. It is
also, above all, subtle. Much too subtle for the tastes of many people. Perfect it needn’t be; it is brilliant.
Now, as anyone knows, “subtle” and “Nicolas Cage” simply are not words that fit together. The man bellows. It's his job.
I grew up with Nepotism Coppola -- oops! -- I mean, Nicolas Cage. Not literally, but rather in the sense that his early,
fun movies (Valley Girl, in which he played a weird teen; Raising Arizona, in which he suddenly played a weird adult)
came out while I was an impressionable high school student. He performed well in these roles. Thus, I like him. He’s a
terrible actor about ninety percent of the time -- he’s a Ham-o-saurus! -- but this is also the very reason to enjoy him. He
shouts like a damned idiot, that we may vicariously enjoy his shouting.
Let me tell you, Cage is very, very generous with the hyperactive shouting in The Wicker Man Remake. Had I any Ritalin,
I’d have pitched it at the screen. I have sold the man comic books, have observed him emerging from his black
Lamborghini, have heard tell of the giant model of a housefly atop his grand piano. I have nodded with vague
understanding as he has spoken in interviews of all-night binges of horror films, or of naming his new son -- of all things
-- Kal-El.
In other words, if Cage wants to remake The Wicker Man -- which he’s been wanting to do for a long while (and I,
frankly, have been envious) -- one must enter the cinema with the foreknowledge that he is crazy.
What I did not expect was for him to become Superman, right at the beginning. Perhaps inspired by watching CHiPs
around the same time I did, Cage plays a motorcycle cop -- albeit with a wounded side (he peruses that self-help cassette
rack found in virtually every truck-stop across America). One afternoon, after going around hassling people and being a
total asshole in that irritating “cop” kind of way, he rescues the plastic dolly of a bratty little girl riding in a fried-out
Pontiac hippie-wagon with, apparently, her mother. No big deal. Until the car is suddenly smashed with a speeding semi-
truck (I suppose these people saw The Descent, too), and fire and death and a big explosion ensue.
Except…Cage, with his face shoved through the shattered rear window which happens to have an explosion of blistering
fire roaring out of it, lands on the highway in a facial close-up revealing not a single scratch or burn.
Superman!
I know the original film very well, and I now know that it is superior to this remake in every possible way -- however
until this laughable physical impossibility launched us into the movie, I wasn’t sure if one could laugh with sincerity at
The Wicker Man Remake.
Definitely, one can. From tip to tail.
What happens next, narratively, is that Cage -- whose character has been renamed Edward Malus (Get it? He's male!) --
suffers the first of many flashback-nightmares of The Incident (later, he even suffers flashback-nightmares of the
flashback-nightmares! Editors, how do you spell f-i-l-l-e-r?). Then he receives a letter in hauntingly pretty calligraphy
(we’ll see more of this) from a flaky ex-fiancée named Willow who writes that her little daughter Rowan has gone
missing -- complete with handy photo. Edward then forces us to endure painfully bad exposition with his fellow officers,
then departs California to go up to one of those mysterious islands in “Washington State” (British Columbia, of course,
where the hell else?), where he suddenly becomes completely, and very noisily, obsessed with finding and saving Rowan.
After we get Cage staring around moodily aboard a ferry with moody soundtrack music which will grow even moodier
despite the increasingly pretty scenery, plus seagull sounds with no actual seagulls, plus him popping pills to reveal his
psychological vulnerability, plus him (and us) suffering the first of many remixes of The Incident (which all look like
David Lynch or black-and-white mid-90s Ollie Stone outtakes), he finally bribes a delivery-man with a seaplane (as with
the significantly cheapened eponymous ritual entity, one of but a few iconic holdovers from the original film -- did I
mention that the original is superior in every possible way?), and finds himself and his ridiculous 1970s-style tie on the
private, unfriendly, hilariously “matriarchal” little land-mass here awkwardly called “Summer’s Isle” (it certainly sounded
better the first time, without the possessive).
Here are a few things you may find interesting about me: I have wandered some of the islands of the Pacific Northwest,
and I have even spent time on one known for its significant -- and very proud -- lesbian population. Thus, the way this
movie depicts a “scary” Feminist Fantasy Island is unavoidably amusing to me. Likewise, I have known my share of
practitioners of “Goddess”-spirituality, and apart from being addicted to spending money, wearing chenille and velvet,
listening to Loreena McKennitt until the CD wears out and puffing the ol’ peace-pipe, they’re pretty harmless, I can
assure you, and often make good company with interesting ideas. (I cannot even begin to count how many “Witches
Heal” bumper-stickers I have seen.) Here, again, my eyes were probably rolling a lot more than most of the nine other
people in attendance at the movie. Furthermore, the “Earth-Mama” archetype-cliché is one I know well from firsthand
experience, and I roared with approving laughter at this movie’s strong suggestion that hippie chicks lust after cops or at
least men in uniform: It’s funny because it’s true!
Beyond all that, and I swear I am not making this up, I wrote a story which parallels, almost note for note, the plot and
dramatic devices of The Wicker Man Remake…when I was twelve years old!
My story, I decided (tellingly), was not good enough for public consumption.
Thus, given this plus my affection for the totally superior original film, it is quite impossible for me to review this thing
without bias. For me, it is far too: A. Relatable; and B. Obnoxious, for that.
Which may be the point. Cage may love horror movie themes (his company got behind Shadow of the Vampire, a
misanthropic dark comedy I appreciated), but the main man to blame for The Wicker Man Remake is its “writer” and
“director” and wannabe provocateur Neil LaBute (Your Friends and Neighbors, and whatever), who seems to have had
his pee-pee twisted very badly by a mean girl at some impressionable age. On the surface, The Wicker Man Remake trots
out some of the props and bits of business of the superior-in-every-possible-way original film -- thus engendering
appreciation by association like a mediocre cover-band -- but underneath, as with Bryan Singer’s Superman semi-remake
earlier this year, all the project is really doing is hijacking a familiar ride in service of an unhappy and neurotic perspective.
You probably already know the ending of The Wicker Man Remake, so please allow me to tell you its theme: Women
select, use, drain, discard and destroy men in order to serve their own beastly designs!
Whoo, baby!
Here’s this: After twenty years of arduous research in the field, I have concluded, similarly, that women, indeed, tend to
be outrageously inflexible and uncompromising creatures, who will with great focus and enthusiasm cause a man to
suffer up to and even beyond the point of his losing interest in life itself, lest any of their slightest whims go unfulfilled. I
have observed and experienced this pattern many, many times (reaching at least as far back as Wham’s “Everything She
Wants”), and have no problem whatsoever defining it, since I also deeply believe the adage, from Ivy Compton-Burnett,
that, ultimately, “there is more difference within the sexes than between them.”
Or, as Emily Watson astutely puts it in Alan Rudolph’s charming Trixie, “Hey, nobody’s human.”
Here then, for the first time, I declare that I can relate -- a little bit, and no more -- to the feelings of the generally idiotic
Neil LaBute. Thus this paragraph shall contain most of the nice things I can say about The Wicker Man Remake. For one,
unlike the bulk of Hollywood product, the movie prompts thought and discussion. For another, it suggests the concept of
a matriarchy -- and since Hollywood is run almost entirely by tiny little men with tiny little nut-sacks, this anaemic and
ultimately hateful suggestion is better than no suggestion at all. The movie also takes the viewer into a rather intense
“alternative culture” -- beyond the alleged comforts of the shopping mall, the manicurist, the bowling alley. I am much,
much more interested in movies that do this than in movies about crappy, overrated actors running around being assholes
and shooting each other -- thus I could, at least, appreciate the thematic ambition behind The Wicker Man Remake.
Ironically, this movie is about one of such asshole-men suddenly becoming ensnared in a self-contained universe
requiring literally nothing more of him than his seed and his blood -- a psychological prison wherein not even his loudest
and most vehement tantrum causes the slightest dent in the matriarchal confidence. In theory, this is undeniably
intriguing.
Strictly as a movie, however, The Wicker Man Remake is idiotic, presumptuous and definitely unnecessary -- blithely
stealing as much philosophically from the amusingly cheesy The Believers and high Hammer camp like Slave Girls (a.k.a.
Prehistoric Women) as it lazily filches stylistic tricks from The Ring Remake, The Ring Remake Two and whatever other
genre flicks are made by this same basic crew up in British Columbia. (It saddens my cineaste heart as I surf a bit and
find that most consumer reviews can only stretch so far as to liken it to The Village -- but at least this makes for a
reasonable parallel in terms of the ratio between pretty-eerie atmosphere and utter crap storytelling.)
Oh yes, the storytelling. Well, soon after Edward arrives on the island, he hastily becomes terrified by old-fashioned light-
switches, disturbing pigeons and fog-machines in the forest! (Oh, my.) You know those ancient stone church ruins so
often found in the American West? -- They've got one of those, too. The full moon also darkens not once but twice with
malevolent clouds. There's a book with a scawy title, plus rubber fetuses in pretty jars (probably on loan from Universal's
prop dept.) just waiting to be discovered. When what appears to be Rowan runs through the foliage at night, it is with
that eerie whispering sound (she must be working with Darth Maul’s people). Meanwhile, Cage -- looking these days like
a melting wax mannequin of himself and sporting some particularly bad fake hair -- keeps doing things like crashing
through the floors of spooky old barns, and getting himself into trouble in largely irrelevant underwater shots, and that
sort of thing. More filler. (He even has a nightmare-hallucination within a nightmare-hallucination, indicating that either
Cage or LaBute has seen An American Werewolf in London.) Even before these astounding devices are employed to
crush his heroic soul, he swaggers up to a bunch of creepy New Age wymyn and insults them and everybody else on the
island (“Quite a racket you’ve got here!” he later sums up) until they all hate him for his loud, aggressive male arrogance.
Whoops. Bad plan.
The insultees include the man-like Sister Beech (Diane Delano in full-on dyke mode) who serves Edward mead (and takes
pains to define its ingredients for audience members who have never attended a Renaissance Faire) then sets about vibing
him out. Likewise Sister Rose (Molly Parker in full-on annoying mode) who teaches all the little braided girl pupils that
men are but phallic symbols then tells Edward that he’s “Quixotic” (and takes pains to define what this means for
audience members who have never heard of “books”). (Did I mention that there are scary twins on this island? There
are.) Then of course there is Sister Honey (Leelee Sobieski in full-on “whatever” mode; I keep getting her confused with
the equally “whatever” Julia Stiles, who also gets paid to stand around blankly in bad horror-thriller remakes), who is
basically a slut for the cause -- the cause rather literally being honey, since this island cult is based upon bee-keeping and
(wait for it!) hive-mentality. (The scene of Cage dashing hysterically through the hexagonal bee-fields had me shaking
with laughter.) Later in the movie, Edward physically abuses these women, which proves neither exciting nor useful.
Cage also dresses up as a bear during the movie’s third act, which is really the only good part of the movie -- not
because it’s actually good, but because it’s full of laughably absurd “Pagan” pageantry and probably “means something”
if you play side two of Led Zeppelin IV whilst watching it.
As for the core of the movie, Edward finds Willow (Kate Beahan), who is also concerned for the wellbeing of her
daughter, Rowan. This was the only other part of the movie that felt “on” to me -- how confused and upset Edward
becomes over Willow’s unfathomably selfish choices throughout. At one point he kisses her grotesquely collagen-
pumped and/or bee-stung lips, and literally the very next shot is of a horse’s ass: Symbolism!
And, putting things firmly into perspective: Can anyone here hold a candle to the deft otherworldliness achieved by
Christopher Lee, as Lord Summerisle, in the original? Of course not. He rules.
In his stead, we receive here not Lord but Sister “Summersisle” -- played very badly with inappropriate beatific (or
should I say bee-atific?) calm by Ellen Burstyn, who is clearly a sport but really should have demanded rewrites. Her (or,
rather, LaBute’s) explanation of the island’s “Celtic” culture proves so cursory and facile as to be laughable, and apart
from getting painted up like Braveheart and issuing a few howlers (“The drone must DIE!”), her limited work on this
project mostly amounts to loitering with the sub-sisters in a few vaguely Pre-Raphaelite tableaux. (She has a great house,
though. Where is it? I want it.)
You see, the problem here is that LaBute and his team really don’t understand that the original Wicker Man was created
from a delicate balance of legitimate pre-history and total malarkey. It works for many reasons (among them that Edward
Woodward, Britt Ekland and Lindsay Kemp, along with Mr. Lee, are all amazing). Instead, LaBute shows up with some
stupid square pegs and seems to think that one can swap out apples for bees (since when do bees not make honey?) or
even discard entirely the vital hook of the policeman’s virginity. LaBute's plot-substitutions are terribly lame and literal.
Again, he clearly did not make this mess out of affection for the original, but simply as an attempt to advance his own
agenda, thus what before were minor contrivances now become enormous loopholes, cobbled together with offensively
bad dialogue (“Did I do it right, Mommy?”) The climax here is thus robbed of its power, and then LaBute even has the
nerve to tack on a dipshit epilogue – entirely his own creation and as depressingly paranoid as anything I’ve seen in
recent film.
And nobody sings.
Actually, a line from Edward, delivered by Cage, pretty much sums up the entirety of The Wicker Man Remake:
“Why do this?”
Indeed.
The Wicker Man Remake
Entertainment Value: 6/13 (Mostly unintentional yuks.)
Style: 3/13
Philosophical Insight: 3/13
-Gregory Weinkauf, 4 September, 2006
The Wicker Man Remake
begs to be sacrificed.
BY GREGORY
While I could no more, in good conscience, recommend The Wicker Man Remake than I could, say, snap my fingers
and make all of Hollywood’s stupid CG animals go away, I shall nonetheless -- in the manner of professional partnerships
and romantic relationships -- do my best to say a few nice things about the project as I blast it from the sky and stomp it
into a smouldering ruin.
First and foremost, The Wicker Man Remake (as it simply must be called) is allegedly based upon the screenplay (by
Anthony Shaffer) of The Wicker Man -- Robin Hardy’s beautiful, seminal motion picture from 1973 (no, my online
friends, it is not “from the ‘60s”) which, yes, happens to be one of my favourite films. I love it so much that its
naysayers simply are not welcome in my house…if I had a house.
Since this review concerns The Wicker Man Remake and not The Wicker Man, let us leave the current appraisal of the
original film at this: It is a one-of-a-kind gem -- superior, thriller-fans, to your Psycho, your Exorcist, your Shining. It is
also, above all, subtle. Much too subtle for the tastes of many people. Perfect it needn’t be; it is brilliant.
Now, as anyone knows, “subtle” and “Nicolas Cage” simply are not words that fit together. The man bellows. It's his job.
I grew up with Nepotism Coppola -- oops! -- I mean, Nicolas Cage. Not literally, but rather in the sense that his early,
fun movies (Valley Girl, in which he played a weird teen; Raising Arizona, in which he suddenly played a weird adult)
came out while I was an impressionable high school student. He performed well in these roles. Thus, I like him. He’s a
terrible actor about ninety percent of the time -- he’s a Ham-o-saurus! -- but this is also the very reason to enjoy him. He
shouts like a damned idiot, that we may vicariously enjoy his shouting.
Let me tell you, Cage is very, very generous with the hyperactive shouting in The Wicker Man Remake. Had I any Ritalin,
I’d have pitched it at the screen. I have sold the man comic books, have observed him emerging from his black
Lamborghini, have heard tell of the giant model of a housefly atop his grand piano. I have nodded with vague
understanding as he has spoken in interviews of all-night binges of horror films, or of naming his new son -- of all things
-- Kal-El.
In other words, if Cage wants to remake The Wicker Man -- which he’s been wanting to do for a long while (and I,
frankly, have been envious) -- one must enter the cinema with the foreknowledge that he is crazy.
What I did not expect was for him to become Superman, right at the beginning. Perhaps inspired by watching CHiPs
around the same time I did, Cage plays a motorcycle cop -- albeit with a wounded side (he peruses that self-help cassette
rack found in virtually every truck-stop across America). One afternoon, after going around hassling people and being a
total asshole in that irritating “cop” kind of way, he rescues the plastic dolly of a bratty little girl riding in a fried-out
Pontiac hippie-wagon with, apparently, her mother. No big deal. Until the car is suddenly smashed with a speeding semi-
truck (I suppose these people saw The Descent, too), and fire and death and a big explosion ensue.
Except…Cage, with his face shoved through the shattered rear window which happens to have an explosion of blistering
fire roaring out of it, lands on the highway in a facial close-up revealing not a single scratch or burn.
Superman!
I know the original film very well, and I now know that it is superior to this remake in every possible way -- however
until this laughable physical impossibility launched us into the movie, I wasn’t sure if one could laugh with sincerity at
The Wicker Man Remake.
Definitely, one can. From tip to tail.
What happens next, narratively, is that Cage -- whose character has been renamed Edward Malus (Get it? He's male!) --
suffers the first of many flashback-nightmares of The Incident (later, he even suffers flashback-nightmares of the
flashback-nightmares! Editors, how do you spell f-i-l-l-e-r?). Then he receives a letter in hauntingly pretty calligraphy
(we’ll see more of this) from a flaky ex-fiancée named Willow who writes that her little daughter Rowan has gone
missing -- complete with handy photo. Edward then forces us to endure painfully bad exposition with his fellow officers,
then departs California to go up to one of those mysterious islands in “Washington State” (British Columbia, of course,
where the hell else?), where he suddenly becomes completely, and very noisily, obsessed with finding and saving Rowan.
After we get Cage staring around moodily aboard a ferry with moody soundtrack music which will grow even moodier
despite the increasingly pretty scenery, plus seagull sounds with no actual seagulls, plus him popping pills to reveal his
psychological vulnerability, plus him (and us) suffering the first of many remixes of The Incident (which all look like
David Lynch or black-and-white mid-90s Ollie Stone outtakes), he finally bribes a delivery-man with a seaplane (as with
the significantly cheapened eponymous ritual entity, one of but a few iconic holdovers from the original film -- did I
mention that the original is superior in every possible way?), and finds himself and his ridiculous 1970s-style tie on the
private, unfriendly, hilariously “matriarchal” little land-mass here awkwardly called “Summer’s Isle” (it certainly sounded
better the first time, without the possessive).
Here are a few things you may find interesting about me: I have wandered some of the islands of the Pacific Northwest,
and I have even spent time on one known for its significant -- and very proud -- lesbian population. Thus, the way this
movie depicts a “scary” Feminist Fantasy Island is unavoidably amusing to me. Likewise, I have known my share of
practitioners of “Goddess”-spirituality, and apart from being addicted to spending money, wearing chenille and velvet,
listening to Loreena McKennitt until the CD wears out and puffing the ol’ peace-pipe, they’re pretty harmless, I can
assure you, and often make good company with interesting ideas. (I cannot even begin to count how many “Witches
Heal” bumper-stickers I have seen.) Here, again, my eyes were probably rolling a lot more than most of the nine other
people in attendance at the movie. Furthermore, the “Earth-Mama” archetype-cliché is one I know well from firsthand
experience, and I roared with approving laughter at this movie’s strong suggestion that hippie chicks lust after cops or at
least men in uniform: It’s funny because it’s true!
Beyond all that, and I swear I am not making this up, I wrote a story which parallels, almost note for note, the plot and
dramatic devices of The Wicker Man Remake…when I was twelve years old!
My story, I decided (tellingly), was not good enough for public consumption.
Thus, given this plus my affection for the totally superior original film, it is quite impossible for me to review this thing
without bias. For me, it is far too: A. Relatable; and B. Obnoxious, for that.
Which may be the point. Cage may love horror movie themes (his company got behind Shadow of the Vampire, a
misanthropic dark comedy I appreciated), but the main man to blame for The Wicker Man Remake is its “writer” and
“director” and wannabe provocateur Neil LaBute (Your Friends and Neighbors, and whatever), who seems to have had
his pee-pee twisted very badly by a mean girl at some impressionable age. On the surface, The Wicker Man Remake trots
out some of the props and bits of business of the superior-in-every-possible-way original film -- thus engendering
appreciation by association like a mediocre cover-band -- but underneath, as with Bryan Singer’s Superman semi-remake
earlier this year, all the project is really doing is hijacking a familiar ride in service of an unhappy and neurotic perspective.
You probably already know the ending of The Wicker Man Remake, so please allow me to tell you its theme: Women
select, use, drain, discard and destroy men in order to serve their own beastly designs!
Whoo, baby!
Here’s this: After twenty years of arduous research in the field, I have concluded, similarly, that women, indeed, tend to
be outrageously inflexible and uncompromising creatures, who will with great focus and enthusiasm cause a man to
suffer up to and even beyond the point of his losing interest in life itself, lest any of their slightest whims go unfulfilled. I
have observed and experienced this pattern many, many times (reaching at least as far back as Wham’s “Everything She
Wants”), and have no problem whatsoever defining it, since I also deeply believe the adage, from Ivy Compton-Burnett,
that, ultimately, “there is more difference within the sexes than between them.”
Or, as Emily Watson astutely puts it in Alan Rudolph’s charming Trixie, “Hey, nobody’s human.”
Here then, for the first time, I declare that I can relate -- a little bit, and no more -- to the feelings of the generally idiotic
Neil LaBute. Thus this paragraph shall contain most of the nice things I can say about The Wicker Man Remake. For one,
unlike the bulk of Hollywood product, the movie prompts thought and discussion. For another, it suggests the concept of
a matriarchy -- and since Hollywood is run almost entirely by tiny little men with tiny little nut-sacks, this anaemic and
ultimately hateful suggestion is better than no suggestion at all. The movie also takes the viewer into a rather intense
“alternative culture” -- beyond the alleged comforts of the shopping mall, the manicurist, the bowling alley. I am much,
much more interested in movies that do this than in movies about crappy, overrated actors running around being assholes
and shooting each other -- thus I could, at least, appreciate the thematic ambition behind The Wicker Man Remake.
Ironically, this movie is about one of such asshole-men suddenly becoming ensnared in a self-contained universe
requiring literally nothing more of him than his seed and his blood -- a psychological prison wherein not even his loudest
and most vehement tantrum causes the slightest dent in the matriarchal confidence. In theory, this is undeniably
intriguing.
Strictly as a movie, however, The Wicker Man Remake is idiotic, presumptuous and definitely unnecessary -- blithely
stealing as much philosophically from the amusingly cheesy The Believers and high Hammer camp like Slave Girls (a.k.a.
Prehistoric Women) as it lazily filches stylistic tricks from The Ring Remake, The Ring Remake Two and whatever other
genre flicks are made by this same basic crew up in British Columbia. (It saddens my cineaste heart as I surf a bit and
find that most consumer reviews can only stretch so far as to liken it to The Village -- but at least this makes for a
reasonable parallel in terms of the ratio between pretty-eerie atmosphere and utter crap storytelling.)
Oh yes, the storytelling. Well, soon after Edward arrives on the island, he hastily becomes terrified by old-fashioned light-
switches, disturbing pigeons and fog-machines in the forest! (Oh, my.) You know those ancient stone church ruins so
often found in the American West? -- They've got one of those, too. The full moon also darkens not once but twice with
malevolent clouds. There's a book with a scawy title, plus rubber fetuses in pretty jars (probably on loan from Universal's
prop dept.) just waiting to be discovered. When what appears to be Rowan runs through the foliage at night, it is with
that eerie whispering sound (she must be working with Darth Maul’s people). Meanwhile, Cage -- looking these days like
a melting wax mannequin of himself and sporting some particularly bad fake hair -- keeps doing things like crashing
through the floors of spooky old barns, and getting himself into trouble in largely irrelevant underwater shots, and that
sort of thing. More filler. (He even has a nightmare-hallucination within a nightmare-hallucination, indicating that either
Cage or LaBute has seen An American Werewolf in London.) Even before these astounding devices are employed to
crush his heroic soul, he swaggers up to a bunch of creepy New Age wymyn and insults them and everybody else on the
island (“Quite a racket you’ve got here!” he later sums up) until they all hate him for his loud, aggressive male arrogance.
Whoops. Bad plan.
The insultees include the man-like Sister Beech (Diane Delano in full-on dyke mode) who serves Edward mead (and takes
pains to define its ingredients for audience members who have never attended a Renaissance Faire) then sets about vibing
him out. Likewise Sister Rose (Molly Parker in full-on annoying mode) who teaches all the little braided girl pupils that
men are but phallic symbols then tells Edward that he’s “Quixotic” (and takes pains to define what this means for
audience members who have never heard of “books”). (Did I mention that there are scary twins on this island? There
are.) Then of course there is Sister Honey (Leelee Sobieski in full-on “whatever” mode; I keep getting her confused with
the equally “whatever” Julia Stiles, who also gets paid to stand around blankly in bad horror-thriller remakes), who is
basically a slut for the cause -- the cause rather literally being honey, since this island cult is based upon bee-keeping and
(wait for it!) hive-mentality. (The scene of Cage dashing hysterically through the hexagonal bee-fields had me shaking
with laughter.) Later in the movie, Edward physically abuses these women, which proves neither exciting nor useful.
Cage also dresses up as a bear during the movie’s third act, which is really the only good part of the movie -- not
because it’s actually good, but because it’s full of laughably absurd “Pagan” pageantry and probably “means something”
if you play side two of Led Zeppelin IV whilst watching it.
As for the core of the movie, Edward finds Willow (Kate Beahan), who is also concerned for the wellbeing of her
daughter, Rowan. This was the only other part of the movie that felt “on” to me -- how confused and upset Edward
becomes over Willow’s unfathomably selfish choices throughout. At one point he kisses her grotesquely collagen-
pumped and/or bee-stung lips, and literally the very next shot is of a horse’s ass: Symbolism!
And, putting things firmly into perspective: Can anyone here hold a candle to the deft otherworldliness achieved by
Christopher Lee, as Lord Summerisle, in the original? Of course not. He rules.
In his stead, we receive here not Lord but Sister “Summersisle” -- played very badly with inappropriate beatific (or
should I say bee-atific?) calm by Ellen Burstyn, who is clearly a sport but really should have demanded rewrites. Her (or,
rather, LaBute’s) explanation of the island’s “Celtic” culture proves so cursory and facile as to be laughable, and apart
from getting painted up like Braveheart and issuing a few howlers (“The drone must DIE!”), her limited work on this
project mostly amounts to loitering with the sub-sisters in a few vaguely Pre-Raphaelite tableaux. (She has a great house,
though. Where is it? I want it.)
You see, the problem here is that LaBute and his team really don’t understand that the original Wicker Man was created
from a delicate balance of legitimate pre-history and total malarkey. It works for many reasons (among them that Edward
Woodward, Britt Ekland and Lindsay Kemp, along with Mr. Lee, are all amazing). Instead, LaBute shows up with some
stupid square pegs and seems to think that one can swap out apples for bees (since when do bees not make honey?) or
even discard entirely the vital hook of the policeman’s virginity. LaBute's plot-substitutions are terribly lame and literal.
Again, he clearly did not make this mess out of affection for the original, but simply as an attempt to advance his own
agenda, thus what before were minor contrivances now become enormous loopholes, cobbled together with offensively
bad dialogue (“Did I do it right, Mommy?”) The climax here is thus robbed of its power, and then LaBute even has the
nerve to tack on a dipshit epilogue – entirely his own creation and as depressingly paranoid as anything I’ve seen in
recent film.
And nobody sings.
Actually, a line from Edward, delivered by Cage, pretty much sums up the entirety of The Wicker Man Remake:
“Why do this?”
Indeed.
The Wicker Man Remake
Entertainment Value: 6/13 (Mostly unintentional yuks.)
Style: 3/13
Philosophical Insight: 3/13
-Gregory Weinkauf, 4 September, 2006
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