The Wicker Man

Snicker man

Difficult to understand why anyone thought a remake of The Wicker Man-- the classic horror mood piece about a police officer who lands on a far island in search of a missing child-- would be a good idea: the film has a plot twist that once revealed was basically it for the audience; only thing left was to pick up your coat and look for the exit. Audiences who saw the 1973 production would know; those who haven't are advised not to bother.

Actually, the twist isn't the be-all and end-all of the film but does provide a visually satisfying climax to seventy minutes of careful buildup-- the kind of all-embracing dread hardcore fans treasure more than the easy scares found in horror movie nowadays.

Easy to compare original and remake: Edward Woodward's Edward Malus looks more formidable than slack-jawed Nicholas Cage's (giving Cage's Edward a recently tragic past doesn't help), and seeing Woodward's stony facade slowly crack under strain is far more unsettling than seeing the already neurotic Cage grow more hysterical than usual. Plus the Puritan self-righteousness one senses in Woodward ("We are a deeply religious people." "Religious? With ruined churches, no ministers, no priests--and children dancing naked!") contrasts nicely with the island's hedonism. 

LaBute with the help of Paul Sarossy has his island handsomely designed and photographed-- House and Garden meets Rome-- but Harry Waxman shot the original with the matter-of-fact grittiness of a travelogue, as someplace exotic you could nevertheless believe you could visit if you traveled far enough. LaBute's screenplay sounds undistinguished compared to the barbed wit of Anthony Shaffer's loose adaptation from David Pinner's Ritual ("Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent." "A small child is even better, but not nearly as effective as the right kind of adult." "And what of the true god, whose glory, churches, and monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past? Now sir, what of him?" "He's dead. Can't complain, had his chance and, in modern parlance, blew it.")

LaBute does play one fairly daring card: he recasts the mysterious society as a matriarchy where men are mute and subservient and the women beautiful, blonde, treacherous-- drawing parallels with (and images from) bees and beehives. This plays into LaBute's strength as provocateur (some would say misogynist) in the field of sexual politics, but the cult is only sketchily realized; one wants to know what the men feel about it, how this all came about, why would the women need such an elaborate plan for-- well, for whatever it is they plan to do. Not an absolute requirement, of course, but with a miscast lead and LaBute's pointed lack of skill in creating anything even moderately suspenseful much less terrifying, there's really nothing else this picture can be about. A hundred minutes of LaBute lecturing on his paranoid vision of a female-dominated hive culture-- with digressions on how it developed and why it would be a bad thing-- would I think be more interesting than this feeble attempt.

That said I can see this becoming a camp classic-- a male chauvinist's twist on a horror favorite. Leelee Sobieski and company make an attractive set of cultists blond tresses pert breasts and all; Ellen Burstyn (complete with Braveheart face makeup done in Toilet Duck Blue) never looked more serene and more confident, or more serenely confidently out of her mind. Wish they actually did something with James Franco (who seems to want to say something but never gets a chance); would have liked a word or two about bees (something both dull and deadpan comic, like "bees are female, except for the drones," or "bees are the first creatures ever to process food"), and would love to learn more about the women's sexual mores (so few men amongst so many women must lead to some kinky fare or some strange relationship issues). On occasion (far too few alas) LaBute cuts loose and gives us something memorably irrational: a glimpse of a woman bearded by a swarm of bees, say, or Burstyn in her queen-sized bed, arrayed in queenly splendor and attended by maidservants. Cage, who can't be relied on to look even halfway menacing, can be relied on to flounder eloquently when given a nonsense character to play: I'm sure the scene where he levels his gun at a woman on a bike and declares in his firmest attempt yet at bold and authoritative: "Lady step away from the bicycle!"-- will be parodied for years to come (if not it should be).

So is there a lesson here? Maybe, but Hollywood hasn't paid attention for years. More relevant is the question of what to do with a $40 million disaster that hasn't set itself up to be one (like Snakes on a Plane): hold midnight shows maybe, with the audience smuggling jars of honey into the theater to slather on the screen and each other? The possibilities are endless.

First published on Businessworld 09/08/06