The Wicker Man (2006)

September 12, 2023 1:59 PM

[TRAILER] A reclusive lawman (Nicolas Cage) travels to a secluded island to search for a girl who has gone missing. Once there, he discovers sinister forces at work among the island's secretive residents, including strange sexual rituals, a harvest festival and possible human sacrifice.

Also starring Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Frances Conroy, Molly Parker, Leelee Sobieski Diane Delano, Michael Wiseman, Aaron Eckhart, James Franco, Jason Ritter.

15% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

JustWatch.

posted by DirtyOldTown (15 comments total)

NO! NOT THE BEES!
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:09 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Never happened. No such film.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:27 PM on September 12, 2023 [7 favorites]

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posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:28 PM on September 12, 2023 [9 favorites]

A friend of mine got me to watch this a few years back (checks records.... 2011) and I must admit I was a bit baffled at the time. Initially I searched for some meaning no matter how nebulous as to why this thing was made. I had lots of theories at the time - LaBute exorcizing his religious upbringing as an ex-Mormon was one possibility. Thinking about it now though? I assume Nicholas Cage's production company approached Neil LaBute (for reasons unknown - but probably Hollywood logic of "I saw this unrelated movie that I liked so why don't you make this film for me that is in a genre you have no experience with?") to do a remake as a conflict of toxic masculinity vs Womanliness (?) rather than Pagan vs Christian and as such it is this half baked mish mash of random ideas from LaBute and Cage. The commentary track on the DVD is unenlightening - LaBute boringly relates the production struggles and organisation. It is a baffling film.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:30 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

I saw the original and was curious to see what they did with the remake. I forget where I saw the film, but in between wondering why they remade it, I was actually kinda looking forward to seeing the 'bees' scene in context. Except the cut I saw didn't have the bees scene. Very disappointing.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:05 PM on September 12, 2023

Haters gonna hate. I love this film because it captures summer in the San Juans, which is sort of my own personal vision of the Elysian Fields.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:34 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is one of my favorite cheeseball films.

I don't know what's happening the vast majority of the time, and that's the entire fun of it.
posted by champers at 3:48 AM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I rewatched this maybe last year? I think maybe, were it an "original" film, which is to say if it had a different title and changed just enough to keep it from being a remake/copyright infringement, people might have more generous opinions of it. This is not to say it would be considered "good" even then, but it could have been enjoyed as the sort of non sequitur of a film that it is.

But as a remake of one of the most beloved cult films ever, it kind of shit the bed. And then poured bees on it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:12 AM on September 13, 2023

The YouTube mashups of the more WTF clips are really all you need to watch. The whole movie is pretty boring, but watching the quick cuts of Cage randomly punching and kicking women and shouting "HOW'D IT GET BURNED?!" is always a fun time.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:56 AM on September 13, 2023

I love this film because it captures summer in the San Juans, which is sort of my own personal vision of the Elysian Fields.

I mean, I’m on Whidbey Island, not the San Juans, but the amount of yellowjackets we’ve been plagued with this summer has felt very similar to the Wicker Man experience.
posted by skookumsaurus rex at 1:47 PM on September 13, 2023

Killing me won’t bring back your goddamned honey!
posted by thecaddy at 4:16 PM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I will say, I found this a bit more engaging than the original. I assume a lot of this is that I'm an early-gen-X Yankee and not an early 70's Brit.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:44 PM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hollywood logic of "I saw this unrelated movie that I liked so why don't you make this film..."

Well LaBute did direct the Black/US version of "Death at a Funeral."
posted by rhizome at 1:58 AM on September 16, 2023

This is a crummy movie. I think that if the Cageaissance had been upon us in 2011, people would have declared it intentionally hilarious, even though it mostly isn't funny. But it wasn't upon us, and so it just seemed like a shitty, extremely misogynistic remake of a very good film.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:03 AM on September 16, 2023

LaBute is forever walking the line between critiquing/interrogating misogyny and being misogynistic. And not always half as well as he supposes.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:37 AM on September 16, 2023 [2 favorites]