I’m a glutton for punishment. I really am. Having not had enough of the 1973 version of Wicker Man, I sought out the 2006 remake by Neil Labute, starring Nichola Cage.
I should’ve known better. The reviews of this movie online, in contrast to the glowing reviews of the original, are horrible. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 15% positive rating, which is pretty impressive.
Watching this movie makes me wonder what the hell any of the principles were thinking. Nicholas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Leelee Sobieski, Frances Conroy. All of them, accomplished actors. Nicholas Cage and Ellen Burstyn won Academy Awards, for chrissakes! And Neil Labute is an award winning playwright. But this movie is a mess, and it deserves all the poor reviews it’s received.
Where the original opened with a languid, panning flyover of the Scottish isles, the remake hurries into action as Officer Edward Malus, overacted in every possible way by Cage, witnesses a horrific accident that haunts him throughout the movie. The main problem with this is that the accident has little emotion and I felt especially cheated at the end when we learn that the whole thing was merely a clumsy plot device employed by Labute.
Malus fall
s into a funk because he wasn’t able to save the little girl from the crash, so he takes some time off from the CHiPs patrol to sulk at his home. He gets a note in the mail from his former lover, Willow- played with a deer in the headlights blank stare by Molly Parker- saying that her little girl, Rowan, is missing on an island in the Puget Sound. A quick search on the internet by Malus reveals that Summersisle (see what Labute did there? he changed the name, but just slightly…)is a private island with no phone service and the source of some sweet organic honey.
After some corny dialog with his partner- who, with his porn-star mustache and crazy expressions, looks like an extra from a Broken Lizard flick- Malus sets out to find the girl, even though he has no authority outside the state of California. Much is made of the fact that Summersisle is private property, and it’s apparent pretty quickly that outsiders are not welcome. Also apparent is that the women are in charge and the men are docile, and may possibly have their tongues cut out. Scary.
A triathlon of silliness ensues as Malus tears up the tranquil little town looking for clues to little Ro
wan’s whereabouts: he runs here, he bikes there, he swims somewhere else. Sometimes he wears a jacket and a tie, other times it’s a bear suit. (If the soundtrack included the theme song to the Benny Hill show, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all.)
Much of Cage’s acting is unintentionally funny, such as when he gets to the inn and starts banging his badge on the bar to get the patrons’ attention, or when he threatens a schoolteacher with a gun to steal her bicycle. Or when he tumbles down a hill in the middle of a field of bees screaming, “Not the eyes! Not the eyes!”
Of course, the whole thing ends up being an intricately plotted plan by Sister Summersisle(Burstyn) to get a male sacrifice to the island for the May Day celebration. It turns out the plot involved every woman in the movie, including the mother and daughter in
the car crash and a female officer at the police station. It’s this kind of writing that really taxes credibility, even in a fantasy or horror movie. At least be consistent with the internal reality of the movie…
Cage is a sarcastic SOB throughout the film, and I’m not sure if Labute intended the character to be that way or not. The soundtrack is pure SciFi channel horror movie stuff, and although the music isn’t subtle, at least it’s appropriate, as opposed to the true weirdness of the folk music of the original.
Whereas the original film focused on the clash of pagan and Christian customs and mores, this remake is a jumbled mess of masculinity vs. femininity with some new age bullshit about goddesses thrown in for good measure. The whole undercurrent of sexuality in the original is replaced by overt violence in the remake. Gone is the seduction of the virgin from the original that resulted in Brett Ekland’s naughty wall dance. Instead, we get several instances of Cage as the scared male protagonist lashing out physically at the matriarchal world around him. It’s all B movie violence though; not a single beaten woman shows a bruise, let alone any blood. His beatdown of Leelee Sobieski is especially interesting since she’s able to fully recover from what looks like unconsciousness not ten minutes later for the festivities at the end.
I’m not giving anything away by saying the ending of the remake mirrors the end of the original. A nice flourish is having Rowan light the fire with a malicious little smile on her face…
I won’t lie to you and say I spent any money whatsoever on this movie. I downloaded the flick off of Pirate Bay and watched it, but I still feel like Neil Labute personally owes me about two hours of my life. You can just use Paypal if you want, Neil.
