Review of The Wicker Man (2006) by Parker M — 15 Mar 2011

1 Star out of 4.

I laughed readily during The Wicker Man and for every each second I was thoroughly bored. The film has this preoccupation with setting a tonal blend of foreboding and bright, but always coming off starkly dull. It's another one of those remakes trying to find its own ground, but instead it digs its own hole of nothing.

It stars Nicolas Cage as Edward Malus, a police officer who witnessed a fatal car accident of a woman and her daughter. It turns out this may have been his daughter. Right... So Edward ventures into an Amish pagan community, where the men are shushed and the women rule. What is this Matriarchy of the Damned? More like dumb and diluted.

Edward searches and searches, the poor guy. He is so determined yet no one in the town will provide answers. Of course they all seem to be hiding something. The island is run by Sister Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn) who carries a devilish smile and demonic morals. Edward keeps insisting that he must find his daughter Rowan, and he seeks advice from his wife Willow (Kate Beahan in a very dreadful performance).

I don't want to ramble on too long about this overlong, convoluted, absurd, and impenetrable work. But I need to note the plot holes: what is with that weird burnt doll and why does it rattle Edward so much? - "How'd it get burnt, how'd it get burnt!" he yells, resulting in hilarity. Why does Rowan look so different from the girl in the car and why does Edward keep fantasizing about the accident lest it means something - it doesn't. Why do the men not speak? Did the script have nothing to say for them or did they refuse to cite it? And how come when an officer wields an empty gun, he does not know it is empty. Apparently they can identify an empty weapon based on its weight.

But that is the movie's minor problems. It, more problematically, never gives this town an idyllic yet ominous texture. The film is shot with this traditional style, commemorating those classic country horror films like Children of the Corn, which stocked up on corn starch and some serious bloody results. The Wicker Man takes 102 minutes for something to happen: the credits. You wait and wait and the overacting does not even help us get through.

Okay, Cage had me when he dressed in a bear costume and punched a sister as if some sort of climactic punchline. I started to hoot and holler enough to make me wonder if director Neil Labute was discarding scares for comedy. Some have argued that The Wicker Man defies logic and thrills in exchange for a more dark comedy approach. I've seen enough dark comedies to alienate this one from any sort of genre. It inhabits no world, genre, or interest level. It just sits, the clock ticks, and then it is over.

I originally awarded this film a higher score but after further pondering it, I realized that The Wicker Man has a massive gap. Its plot is a shaggy dog story, where nothing develops, is made suspenseful, and when it is made funny we do not understand the satirical absurdism. Absurdism in Camus or Beckett really applied allegories to their works because they loved to cheat and challenge us and make that reaction worthy of something relevant. The Wicker Man is pointless and laughable but in a worse way it is detaching. It has nothing to say or offer. But the bees. Not the bees!