The Wicker Man: Movie, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2006)

9/06/2007 Posted by Admin

I'll have what she's having

(Originally published 2006)

File it under "What were they thinking?" And then file that file in the trash.

The Neil LaBute movie, "The Wicker Man," a remake of the 1973 horror film of the same name, is one of those bad movies that it takes three good movies to get over--and not necessarily for the audience. What they get here is a low, unintentional comedy, a movie so spectacularly rotten, you sit there thinking, "Wow, this is spectacularly rotten." And then you wonder whether you're witnessing a small slice of cinematic history.

Could this, in fact, be the worst film of 2006? Have the dog days of summer finally produced their awful, unmentionable litter? We'll see.

Still, when Academy Award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn appears in her fright wig and "Braveheart" makeup, flapping her arms as she wends around giant, buzzing bee hives and trips through utopian woods with her creepy island “sisters” hot on her tail, there's good reason to wonder.

And let's not forget Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage, the star of the show, who at one point dons a bear suit and dances in what essentially is his own little parade of death. All of this and so much more (and so much less) unfolds in "The Wicker Man," whose plot barely deserves mention here.

So, naturally, we'll mention it.

Cage is Edward Malus, a California cop who begins the film on a bum note. When a little girl throws her doll out of a moving car, Malus pulls the car over, gently chastises the girl and her mother, and then watches in astonishment as the feisty blonde brat tosses her doll back into the busy street. Before Malus can retrieve it, the girl and her mother are creamed by a semi, the car catches fire and boom--they're toast.

Haunted, ruined and hooked on anti-depressants, Malus now is a man questioning his very existence when he receives a letter from his old flame, Willow (Kate Beahan).

Apparently, Willow’s daughter has gone missing. Will Malus come to the secluded island of Summersisle to help find her? Sure, he will. Will Willow's daughter look exactly like the doll-tossing darling Malus watched burn alive? Sure, she will. Will the movie adequately explain all its loose threads and odd connections? The cult-like group of man-hating women who inhabit the island? How LaBute, who wrote the script, convinced this cast to star in this movie?

Sure, it won't.

"The Wicker Man" isn’t as bad as the decade’s biggest misfire, “Battlefield Earth,” but it comes close. It’s the sort of movie in which you hope Ellen Burstyn, once so good in “The Exorcist,” still has a few connections at the Vatican. Her Sister Summersisle character and Cage’s Malus are so embarrassingly conceived, Burstyn might ask for a divine intervention to help us forget them both.

Grade: BOMB

(Also available on HD DVD and Blu-ray disc)