10 Terrible Movies Everybody Loves

10. The Wicker Man

When it comes to actors starring in films that defy the metric of good and bad, Nicolas Cage has an entire portfolio of them. Whilst the quality of Cage’s acting will forever be a hotly debated topic, it’s a pretty unanimously held opinion that The Wicker Man is one of the biggest overall clunkers he’s ever starred in. And yet, because of it, it’s beloved.

The film opens with detective Edward Malus, as played by Cage, witnessing the death of a small girl after a truck ploughs into her Mother’s parked car. This opening is a beautiful summation of the film’s lack of subtlety. It turns the creeping discomfort of the 1978 original into an unintentional comedy.

As he searches for a missing girl on a mysterious island, Cage flails wildly around a meandering plot with an obvious conclusion, screaming like a man possessed.

The story has a hideous double fake-out moment where Malus saves a drowning girl, wakes up on the dock, realises he has the girl in his arms and then wakes up again. At the movie’s crescendo, Cage dresses in a bear costume and viciously sucker-punches the leader of the all-woman cult. And finally, of course, there’s the “not the bees” meme which might be one of Cage’s finest moments of absurdity.

If you ask anyone, The Wicker Man is a laugh-a-minute comedy no matter what it was originally designed to be.