10 Horror Movie Casting Choices That Should've Worked (But Didn't)

Whether The Wicker Man needed remaking is a separate debate - it didn’t - but Neil LeBute’s 2006 effort is a deliriously enjoyable disaster. Key to this is the lead turn from Nic Cage, in prime Bad Cage mode as Sheriff Edward Malus. Cage watched the Ed Woodward original, focussed only on the final, frenzied minute, and worked at that pitch for the whole hilarious duration.

Ellen Burstyn, then, is tasked with stepping into Christopher Lee’s shoes as the mysterious island’s leader. She takes few cues from Lee’s warm but sinister Lord Summersile, instead playing her villain with subtlety and reserved, frosty menace.

In most films, an actor of Burstyn’s calibre taking that approach would work fine. Not in this one. Burstyn is out of place in this festival of madness, the one stuffy note in a film otherwise given over to deranged, broad performances. Great actors like Frances Conroy and Molly Parker go for broke, aware this isn’t going to end well. Burstyn, to her detriment, keeps things professional.

The end result is that her relative banality sticks out like a sore thumb. She probably embarrasses herself the least, but feels the most out of place.