Review – The Wicker Man (2006)

Lackwit writer/director Neil Labutte somehow manages to combine the worst parts of the original Wicker Man and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home into one royal stinker of a movie. Though I can’t honestly say that this left me longing for the days of the Britt Ekland nekkid pagan booty dance, it did make me wish that the remakers’ money had been better spent. Nicolas Cage plays a cop lured to a strange island of new-age, man-hating cultists who all seem intent on covering up the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of a young girl. Perhaps the protagonist is made deliberately unsympathetic in order to make his ultimate fate a bit more palatable, but smoothing the way for the end doesn’t make the rest of the movie any easier to swallow. Several spots in the production also left me wondering if we won’t ultimately be treated (and I use the term loosely) to a DVD release that includes scenes too explicit for a PG-13 rating. But that in turn made me wonder whom they thought would be in the audience. Aiming for the mid-teen crowd seems like a waste of time with something this dull, so why not spice it up and settle for the R? Wish I’d skipped it