THE WICKER MAN (2006)

Although overlooked by the Oscars, The Wicker Man remake did handsomely at the Razzie (as in raspberry) Awards. Nicolas Cage is nominated as Worst Actor; the film is up for both Worst Picture and Worst Remake or Rip-Off; Neil LaBute, who also directed, is a nominee for Worst Screenplay; Cage and his bear costume are nominated as Worst Screen Couple. This ain't going to be pretty....

Cage is Officer Edward Malus, a motorbike policeman monitoring traffic. He sees a doll fly out of a car window, picks it up, and pulls the vehicle over. A mother and a hateful little blonde girl are moving, and the child is bored. She tosses the doll again. As Malus retrieves it a huge truck smashes into the car, which bursts into flames. Malus makes a heroic but futile effort to save the child. He goes into a decline, popping pills and unable to focus. Then comes a letter from his long lost love, Willow, who is seeking her daughter who has gone missing. Malus couldn't save the blonde child. Is this his chance at redemption?
Malus goes to Summersisle, an island in the Pacific Northwest that's like a Lilith Faire theme park. The overwhelming female inhabitants wear flowing robes and shun modern ways. There doesn't seem to be electricity on the island, but some rooms have light switches and wall sockets (oops). They don't much take to strangers but Sister Beech (Diane Delano, a good no nonsense actress who manages to speak her dialogue without giggling) rents Malus a room. Soon he makes contact with Willow (Kate Beahan) and figures out that the missing child is his. Trouble is, people on the island deny the child's existence.

The missing daughter's name is Rowan, a Gaelic name meaning little red one. Malus catches glimpses of the girl wearing a red sweater, much like the tiny enigmatic figure in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Sister Rose's school (all girls- hint, hint) seems informed by Wolf Rilla's Village of the Damned. Malus finds that things on the island are worse than they seem. Honey (Leelee Sobieski continuing her career decline- going from being directed by Stanley Kubrick to this, and then being directed by Uwe Boll within just eight years) begs Malus to take her with him when he leaves. But can he?
Cage overacts wildly, shouting and waving his arms even when he's not being chased by bees. He punches out various women. Then there's the bear suit. But the real blame here belongs to writer/director Neil LaBute. He's done highly acclaimed work like In the Company of Men and the wonderful Nurse Betty and is one of the last people I'd have thought of for a project like this which calls out for a visceral sensibility like John Carpenter, Robert Rodriguez, or Eli Roth, not gender politics. LaBute probably told himself “This isn't a horror film, it's a metaphor,”; it works as neither. The film was savaged by critics- the New York Times called it “comically inept” and the term “shockingly bad” was used by the New York Daily News, and the comments by filmgoers at the Internet Movie Database are almost uniformly derogatory. Press and public loathed the film, but somehow it made over $23 million (unfortunately for the producers, it cost forty).

Lionsgate’s DVD presentation is fine enough, but with a film that has been so universally mauled by the critique, its understandable that they haven’t gone overboard in the special features department. This means that the only notable extra, and no bad one at that, is an interesting audio commentary track with Director Neil LaBute, Producer Norm Golightly and Editor Joel Plotsch. This release is being touted as an “Extended Director's Cut - Featuring Previously Unseen Footage”, but unless you studied the theatrical version to any great degree, I doubt you’ll even tell the difference. It has boosted the rating from a 12A to a 15, indicating that an effort has been made to add a little extra peril to make people want to see the movie more, but it doesn’t. Ultimately, extra footage or not, the outcome of the film is still the same, a weak and unnecessary rehash of a classic 70’s thriller which would make Anthony Shaffer turn in his grave.