Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a few more reviews following-up the one I posted last night. The first one up is a flat out rebuttal to that negative first review, the second is in total agreement and the third is a mix between the two. Beware of spoilers below, especially the second review. Enjoy!
Hi Quint,
Spoilers Below.
I've never written to the site before, but Gandhiboy's review of Wicker Man needs a rebuttal; I'm not sure he understood what he was watching. I saw the film last night. (I'm a projectionist at a movie theater.) First, I should say that I have not seen the original film, nor have I read the novel upon which it was based. So I'm judging this solely on its own merits.
The Wicker Man is a brilliant (intellectually), complicated film. I say it's brilliant on an intellectual level, and it is. Think of Planet of the Apes, the original Charlton Heston version... On the surface, that seemed like a straight-forward cautionary sci-fi film, but underneath the surface, there were some incredibly intelligent subtexts about man's failure to communicate with man and racial prejudice. The Wicker Man is operating on the same level; it seems on the surface like it's a fairly straight-forward horror film, but if you look at it a little more deeply, you come to understand that it is actually about something. Gender roles, sure; the way men and women manipulate each other, of course; our relationships with religion, bingo. And I can't help but wonder if some of this is really about Neil Labute exploring his own history with the LDS Church. Anybody familiar with the LDS church will probably watch this movie, with its repeated Beehive/Bee imagery, the social structures of the strange society being depicted, its references to the pioneers, and feel a little uncomfortable with what they're seeing.
(Just watch the final scene and see where Nicolas Cage ends up.)
At first, it feels a little uneven, like it's not sure what kind of movie it wants to be. The scenes portraying Nicolas Cage as a depressed highway patrolman -- Edward -- living in a small California town are almost boring. Primarily because you don't get a very strong sense of who he is or what he wants. He's emotionally crippled, he can't function. The acting in these scenes is (purposefully) quite awkward and obvious, like a 1980's television show.
But then the story really comes to life when Edward receives a creepy letter from his former fiance, emploring him to come to Summer's Isle and help her find her missing daughter. It turns out she is actually from an Ahmish-esque backwater society in the middle of nowhere, and suspects the other residents there of foul play.
Edward's arrival on the Isle plays out with a nastily creepy scene, in which the locals are carrying what appears to be a struggling human-sized thing inside a bag. He is trying to get directions, but at the same time, his attention keeps being drawn to the bag. "Your bag is dripping," he says. The locals invite him to look inside, but as he goes to do so; the bag thrashes startlingly, the locals (they display odd and cruel behavior throughout the film) laugh like maniacs, and Edward, freaked out, never does look inside the bag. He just hurries on his way. (And who wouldn't?)
This sets the stage for the extreme creepiness which follows. This is not a film trying to deliver any big scares. Rather, it follows fairly exactly the classic horror structure laid down by H.P. Lovecraft; we are presented with something foreign and alien-seeming to our normal way of life, and a series of events build a slow sense of inevitable dread, finally culminating in an ending so perfect and horrifying it's like a mathematical equation.
Once situated on the Isle, Edward proceeds to threaten and bluster his way through a poorly-conceived investigation for the missing girl, failing to impress the extremely strange women of the isle with his police "authority". When he learns that he is the girl's father, his investigation takes on a desperate sheen. As his efforts increase, so does his frustration. Nicolas Cage plays all of this really, really well.
I agree with Gandhiboy that the weakest part of the movie was the flashbacks Edward kept having. After a while, it became: Okay, okay, we get it. Edward is motivated by the girl he couldn't save at the beginning of the movie, and views saving this new girl as his redemption for that failure. It's important to him. We get it.
But it doesn't take up a quarter of the movie. It probably takes up 4 or 5 minutes of total screen time.
I won't ruin the movie for anyone, but I will say that once it gets going, The Wicker Man is full of absolutely classic horror-movie imagery. Particularly towards the ending, when we find the women of the isle beginning to dress in animal costumes. There are a lot of fantastic Kubrick-esque moments. For me, my single most frightening moment was when Nicolas Cage is trying to get the men of the Isle to help him, and one of them makes a barking noise, and we realize -- holy shit. They can't talk. And then you look back at the clues; how none of the men ever talk, how they're separated from the females even in childhood... And you put it together, and you realize they really are treated as drones. They aren't even given the language.
Angelo Badalamenti deserves special mention for creating an INCREDIBLE score that, at times, sounds very Hitchcock, very Bernard Herrmann, and really creates the perfect atmosphere for this movie.
Earlier I talked a little bit about the experience of watching this movie as an intellectual exercise. But it is also a great experience just watching it as a movie -- as entertainment. I don't know how it might hold up against comparisons against the original, having not seen it -- but if you haven't seen it, (like me) I think you will have a terrific Goddamn time watching it. I know I did. Maybe if I had seen the original I wouldn't have enjoyed this. I have no idea. But as it is I sort of love it, and when I tell people about it, I'll be using the Planet of the Apes comparison. Because I really think that is, structurally, the closest cousin this movie has.
Quint, if you use this, call me Mr. Sleep. Love the site.
Review #2, with tons of spoilerage. Beware!!!
Hey Quint,
I just got back from a preview screening of The Wicker Man here in the UK, I see someone pipped me to the post and there's already a review up. I didn't read it yet as I want to get these thoughts down before I forget them. Feel free to use this.
I love the original film and didn't want to be prejudiced towards this remake, even though I attended a Q&A with Christopher Lee and Robin Hardy a few weeks ago where they expressed extreme skepticism about the whole project. So, I went in with an open mind.
It closed quickly.
There are only a couple of legitimate reasons to remake a film - the first is to improve on the original, the second to re-explore the theme and subject matter, the third is financial. This film certainly avoids the first, is far too mediocre to really qualify as the second and I don't think the title is commercial enough to pull a big enough crowd to satisfy the third.
Lets start with what this film gets right.
That was quick.
OK, it's a mess. From the bottom to the top. The writing is HORRIBLE, endless scenes of dull exposition, momentum is not built up until really 20 minutes before the end. The rest is just dull conversations. They seem to have peppered it with pointless dream sequences (which use so much repeat footage from earlier in the film, one wonders if they were added as a last minute editing ploy to add any kind of tension) to keep us from dozing off but really they just make you go 'wha?'.
Nic Cage is badly cast. He's too one-dimensional, too uninteresting and seems uncomfortable and unable to work up any real energy. The acting in general seems somewhat under-rehearsed, in fact. It often seems like the two main actors in any scene have been given conflicting direction so the tone is patchy and stilted but not in a good way. I guess Edward Woodward casts a long shadow, but it isn't just performance, it's character writing. Woodward's lead was self-righteous, indignant, moralistic and outraged. He almost deserved it, it was his arrogance and forthright judgements that allowed him to be played so easily. Cage lacks that motivation and is far from charismatic onscreen. That final scene in Woodward's hands is devestating to watch, as he prays and shouts and tries to speak to god. Finally, almost happy to be a Christian martyr. What do we get from Cage? some lame protestations and a looped line of exposition 'aw, you've broken my legs!'.
The music is a trainwreck, which is strange because Angelo Badalamenti is a great composer. Actually, I think it's not that the score is bad per se, more that it is used horribly. It's over dramatic and seems to have been used to fill in the atmosphere which hasn't been supplied by the acting, direction or photography.
Ellen Burstyn could have been interesting if given as much scope as Christopher Lee, but she is restricted to just a few scenes and plays quite a dull functional role.
The shift to the whole matriarchal private island is one of the big problems. In the original, Woodward travels to a normal seeming (if eccentric) Scottish island. A whole community with shops and lots of different people. The shock at the end is that the whole damn island was in on the scheme. It's less shocking to believe that a weirdo commune could plot such a thing.
SPOILER:
The ending. Yeah, they kill him. Thank god. But, oh, what's this? La Bute offers us AN EXTRA TWIST ENDING! What words on a title card instill more cringiness inan audience than 'SIX MONTHS LATER', always a sign of a cheesey add-on. In this one, we see one of the girls from the island walking into a California bar and choosing the next victim for the old bonfire treatment. Not only is it pointless and tacky, but the next victim is, unless I'm very much mistaken, played by James Franco - yep the film ends not with the falling of a wicker head to reveal a new dawn, but with a CELEBRITY CAMEO. The ending is going to help LaBute dispel his woman-hating image much, either.
So, it's awful. My suggestion if you're thinking about checking it out is just to rewatch the original and marvel at not only how great filmmaking can be, but how far the quality has dropped.
If you use this, please call me 'www.jerkbeast.co.uk' - Thanks, man.
This last review comes from Paul over The Hollywood News who wanted to share his thoughts with us. Thanks, man!
Hey Harry, Paul here from THN (The Hollywood News www.thehollywoodnews.com) in the UK. I've just got in from tonight's preview screening of The Wicker Man, a remake of possibly one of our best horror flicks of all time. If I hadn't have seen the original, I know I would have liked this movie (not loved, but liked). However, I have seen the original and.... well, here's our review.... (Minor Spoilers)
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So, the day has arrived that Neil LaBute's remake of THE WICKER MAN hits cinemas across the globe. The film is based on the screenplay of the original flick that starred Edward Woodward and the legend that is Christopher Lee. The question on everyone's lips is 'is it any good,' and 'did we really need the movie to be remade?'
I'll answer that in just a little bit.
Minor spoilers ahead.
The story has be changed slightly, but the basis of the plot remains the same. Nicolas Cage's character, Edward Malus, travels to the remote island of Summersisle to help his former girlfriend, Willow (Kate Beahan), find her missing daughter. There, Edward is drawn into a web of ancient traditions and murderous deceit, and each step he takes closer to the lost child brings him one step closer to the unspeakable. Or that's how it's official worded.
I watched LaBute's 'Wicker Man' literally days after I saw the original for the first time in around fifteen or so years. I had long forgotten about the original flick, directed by Robin Hardy, but as the movie is about to get a re-release on DVD (out Monday in an all new director's cut) I was able to watch the film in its extended form (the way Hardy intended it before the original distributors got their mitts on it) on Sunday evening. The movie weirded me out (though in a good way), and I have been haunted by the experience all week. The film has this underlying disturbing factor about it, and builds and builds until the famous, and even more terrifying ending it unleashed upon the unsuspecting audience. But if you've seen it, you know all that. I pretty much watched that movie with fresh eyes this week, as I was way to young to take it in all those years ago, and memories of it were long gone. But I love it. One of the movies where you're still thinking about it days later. The best kind.
However, with seeing that original flick, I think it effected the way I watched LaBute's version, and certainly affected my enjoyment of it. The 2006 WICKER MAN gives us a more in depth front and back end to the movie, and a lot more character development is put into Cage's character. Although the filmmaker has opted to do this, I thought that Cage's Edward Malus lacked a lot of depth, at least comparing it with Woodward's investigating virginal police sergeant in the original. In fact the whole story, I thought was dumbed down for the update. There were a lot of touches to the original film that remained absent from this version, and while I know LaBute had to make things different from the seventies version, I thought he disposed of a lot of the 'good stuff' that made Hardy's movie so darn enjoyable albeit disturbing.
Ellen Burnstyn's Sister Summersile is not a patch on campy Christopher Lee's Lord Summerile, the locals weren't 'local' enough for me (bad League of Gentlemen reference there), and there simply isn't enough building tension leading up to that 'shocking' finale. I also though that the religious aspect of this film, which plays a huge part in the final scenes, wasn't clearly explained. The film maybe could have benefited with an extras few scenes in the second act to develop that aspect of the screenplay thus given the shocking revelations at the end more impact. Another final downpoint is the last scene of the film which was, in my mind, completely pointless. I won't go into any details here, but it's just silly and silly with a cameo from a fairly famous young actor too.
I think that THE WICKER MAN 2006 will appeal to people that have either never seen the original, or saw it years ago and can't remember just how darn good it was. I watched the film with a like minded friend who had never seen Hardy's film, but had a great time with LaBute's movie. I don't think this is a bad movie, but if you're comparing it to what came before (which I know I shouldn't do), then it just doesn't cut the mustard. If I had seen this before last Sunday, then maybe the grade would have come out a little more favorable.
In answer to my previously raise questions. Is it any good? Well, yes in a way. But, did we really need to see it remade? Well no. I just hope that viewers of this movie will go back and take a look at the original, just to curiously make up their own minds.
GRADE: C
