The Wicker Man (remake)

Hollywood has a habit of re-making foreign films for an American audience. Sometimes these films are good (The Magnificent Seven), sometimes they are atrocious (Stallone's Get Carter, which was so bad that it was never released in Britain). When I first heard that Hollywood was re-making The Wicker Man I was appalled. The original film is a neo-pagan favourite because it presents pagan philosophy in a sympathetic manner while warning about the dangers of fundamentalist belief. How could a re-make do it justice? The answer, of course, is that it can't, but then it's trying to do something completely different.

The story is as follows. Edward Malus, a cop traumatised when he fails to save a child from a burning car, is asked by an ex-lover, Willow Woodward, to find her missing daughter, Rowan. He travels to an isolated community off the North West USA and encounters some decidedly odd people as he tries to save the child.

As a film in its own right, The Wicker Man is a standard Hollywood psychological thriller with a few innovative elements. It is well shot and competently directed with typically high production values, using all the standard tricks to build suspense and maintain audience interest. Nicholas Cage is good as the central character, and the rest of the cast effectively convey the creepiness of the Summersisle community. The director uses a number of techniques from Japanese horror to give the film a surreal quality. The script uses an interesting analogy in its portrayal of the islanders, who have formed a matriarchal society based on a bee hive. The ending is still unexpected for those who do not know the source film. There are also a number of in-jokes that fans of the original can watch out for.

Inevitably, the film suffers in comparison to the 1973 classic it is based on. Most noticeable of all is the scoring. The original had a superb folk music score which has been replaced by a generic Hollywood soundtrack. Admittedly, country and western would not have suited the film at all, but I still found myself missing the songs. The religious conflict between policeman and community is absent, as is the sexual symbolism, and the script is far less intelligent as a result. In effect, the film has been dumbed down for a mass audience. There are also severe problems with the script. First, there is a totally unnecessary prologue which is only included so that the film can reference Don't Look Now, which was released alongside the original. Second, the relationship between Willow Woodward and Edward Malus is boring as hell. Third, the script is full of moments of unintentional comedy, especially during the last half hour, when Mr. Cage suddenly morphs into Supercop for no apparent reason. Oh, and the writer appears to have restricted his research to Silver Ravenwolf books, in the process turning Lady(!) Summersisle into a teen Wiccan.

So, is the re-make of The Wicker Man worth seeing? For me, the film was spoiled by a poorly handled ending and a script that does not do justice to the original. Watch that instead.