The Wicker Manweblog| writing| reviews| flickr| Mothcast |
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Is this the most redundant remake ever? I think so. FF said it was up there with Get Carter, but even Get Carter was mired in its own genre. The original Wicker Man is unique even within horror. Its peculiar sense of Britishness and bleak, chilling atmosphere stands it apart from any other movie. Well, certainly any that I've seen. LaBute's version is very much a modern horror pic, though it does its best to avoid the common tropes. It sneaks a couple of jumpy moments in, and there's a bit where someone flashes by the camera in the foreground accompanied by a sting on the soundtrack. But by and large, it is interested in atmosphere. The fact that it fails to generate any is a problem. It just looks like a modern film, like any other. There's an almost painterly lushness to it at times, and this sits badly with the sense of unease which needed to be created in order for the final twist to have the satisfying, horrifying impact that it should have. There are moments of tension - Nicolas swinging over the Big Pile of Rusty Tools, Nicolas sneaking into the Doctor's cabin, Nicolas entering the underwater prison - but they are few and far between, Nic's blustering self-importance overwhelming any notion of him being a helpless outsider. This is a very shouty Cage performance. You have been warned. The other performances are generally ok. Ellen Burstyn fails to match Christopher Lee's charming, somewhat demented portrayal of the leader of the Summersisle commune (here basically and tiresomely arranged like a bee colony), but she does the best she can with a thinly written role. Kate Beahan is winsome but replaceable as Willow Woodward. Oh, boy, I bet they thought that was a real clever reference until they realised that a)it's not and b)they're saddled with it for the whole movie. Molly Parker is nicely creepy as the teacher, Sister Rose. And her twin sister, Sister Thorn. For no readily explicable reason. Still, two Molly Parkers for the price of one, can't say fairer than that. Spoiler for the end. Surprisingly, it does have the balls to take the original plot to its original conclusion. Although, this being a 12a, we get the hilarious, tension-deflating moment just before the Man himself is revealed whereby an unseen Cage yells "OWwwwWWWWwwwwWWW! MY LEGS!" in a manner not unlike Hermes complaining that Leela is hacking off "His precious torso" in Futurama. Then the broken Officer Malus is hauled into the Wicker Man and burned. Honestly, I wasn't expecting them to let him die. But they did. I also wasn't expecting a coda with Nic screaming all over it, either, but there that was too. Nice. Big spoilers end I have to say that I went in expecting a farce. And on occasion it was just that - the comedy bear costume moment is pricelessly funny - but it is, in all fairness, an attempt at something more intelligent and sophisticated than the usual "Stranger wanders into backwoods community and comes a cropper" junk horror movies we're pelted with at the moment. For that we must applaud it. As I've intimated already, however, the attempt fails. It's not brainless, but it is witless. |
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