Internet sensation "The Wicker Man" is actually so much more than an 5 minute clipfest of Nicholas Cage yelling, roundhouse kicking women, and generally behaving like a cocaine-addled twat in a bear suit. It's actually a shockingly terrible remake of one of the most intriguing films of the 70's. The original has Summerisle, a deceptively charming rural setting off the Scottish coast, reveal itself to be a pagan colony that seems to be hiding a missing girl. Edward Woodward deals with the locals as best as his police investigation and christian upbringing allow, until it turns out he's the key to their harvest sacrifice. Cue the titular Wicker Man, and a chilling ending.... The original succeeds due to the gradual letting on that what seems to be kooky, rural behaviour is at first reveal pagan tradition and then ultimately a town united in deception. The cast effortlessly creates this town with a combination of both solid talent (including Christopher Lee and Ingrid Pitt at the height of their Hammer-era powers) and well-executed moments including a tavern singalong and maypole dances. It's an immaculately realized, tradition-rooted island town, until the cracks start to reveal so much more slipping through.... That kind of slow build that lures you into its story and world is utterly jettisoned in the remake, and it must be said that it's down to both the script's downplaying of its relocation to New England (Itself rife with towns that could just as easily have their own mythology go sour; just ask Stephen King) and Nicholas Cage's decision to play the lead less as a concerned everyman and more outright insane. I've not mentioned other changes the remake made (Lee's patriarch rewritten as Ellen Burstyn's matriarch actually could work very well in a pagan context) because they simply don't matter. Cage doesn't so much chew the scenery of the film as much as he instead subjects it to levels of treatment more appropriate to a "Crank" sequel. I'll put it simply: You're never going to notice the subtleties of the world you've walked into when your identification figure is ROUNDHOUSE KICKING A YOUNG GIRL INTO A WALL. The original film took you to a place and revealed more and more until you realized things weren't so charming anymore. The remake takes you to a place with Nicholas Cage, and he proceeds to yell at it until the credits roll. ARGH: Watch the highlights videos on Youtube, take your pick. But I personally enjoy the moment where Cage questions what's in a sack, and his first guess aloud is a shark. Because, naturally, sharks. Also, this movie hates women harder than Nicolas Cage and Zack Snyder's "Sucker Punch" time travelling together to stop women's suffrage. That sentence makes more sense than "The Wicker Man", by the way. IRREPLACEABLE ELEMENT: Oh wow. This movie doesn't replace things, it just releases Cage on them and he violently screams them into submission. If THIS movie wasn't supposed to be "The Wicker Man" and instead was Nicolas Cage's version of "The Room", I suppose it could then be seen as a triumph.
In a parallel universe where game shows' final jackpots and consequent fortunes depend on knowledge of obscure music trivia and Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes, I've probably gone rich, insane, and am now a powermad despot. But happily we're not there, so I'm actually rather pleasant. Really.
