The Wicker Man

There's a deliriously delightful weird streak that runs through "The Wicker Man," at least for a while, with Nicolas Cage as a cop investigating the disappearance of a child from a creepy, private island in Washington's Puget Sound.

Apparently these people are into all kinds of pagan rituals, and Cage's Edward Malus just happens to have arrived in time for the harvest festival. So there he is, running around in a jacket and tie, banging on doors with a gun in his hand, yanking the piggy and bunny masks off the faces of cherubic little blond girls in search of the one who's gone missing.

Sometimes he bellows that he'll arrest whomever gets in the way of his investigation, in sharp contrast to the sardonic tone he takes in making most of his observations about this remote, archaic place and its unhelpful residents. You can just hear him, can't you? That low, monotone drawl of his.

It's wild, really — and before it spirals into irretrievably ridiculous territory toward the end, it can even be fun, just because the mystery gets so bizarre and you have no idea where it's going.

The wildest part of all, though, is the fact that Neil LaBute wrote and directed "The Wicker Man" (a remake of a critically acclaimed 1973 British thriller), that besides Cage it also stars Ellen Burstyn and Frances Conroy (none of them no-names) and that nevertheless the film wasn't shown to critics before opening day.

Not exactly a show of confidence, especially at the end of the summer.

But it isn't nearly as horrendous as most films that are withheld from us. It's never as scary or suspenseful as it aspires to be, but it might just be the greatest bad movie of the year, with its clunky writing resulting in some surprisingly entertaining kooky moments.

Burstyn is a kick as Sister Summersisle, the leader for whom the island is named. Smiling, regal and condescending in long, silver hair and flowing pastel robes, she's the earthly representation of the mother goddess all the residents worship, and her exchanges with Cage represent the closest thing to actual quality.

The ethereal Kate Beahan co-stars as Edward's former fiancee and the mother of the missing girl, who asked him to come to this strange place to help look for her. All she does is inspire him to say really obvious things like, "Something bad is about to happen, I can feel it." Well, duh.

What Edward ends up finding is a society where women dominate — they function as schoolteacher, innkeeper, doctor, etc. — and men are around solely to perform menial tasks and to help procreate.

"We love our men," Sister Summersisle explains to Edward. "We're just not subservient to them."

And maybe that's the point of LaBute's involvement. After years of being accused of misogyny with films like "In the Company of Men" and "The Shape of Things," perhaps "The Wicker Man" is his penance.

A well-dressed but ultimately hollow remake of a terminally original cult classic, Neil LaBute's The Wicker Man dutifully maintains the majority of the original 1973 film's mystery while sadly jettisoning the religious undertones and eerie quirkiness that earned that film a devoted following. While a cursory glance reveals a remake that does at times bear striking surface resemblance to the source material, closer inspection ultimately reveals a generic thriller sunken by the director's misguided attempt to inject his own questionable agenda into the proceedings. By transforming the island of phallus-worshipping pagans of the original into a community of female-dominated wiccans who seemingly keep their milquetoast male population well in check when it comes to anything but breeding, LaBute seems to be doing little more than confirming the accusations of misogyny that were previously leveled at him in the wake of such efforts as In The Company of Men and The Shape of Things. While even that could have worked had it been established that the beliefs of the buttoned-down protagonist compelled him to look down his nose at the bee-keeping wiccans who populate the idyllic island - perhaps he was a hard line sexist? - in a similar manner as his staunchly Christian predecessor had to the Godless dirt-worshippers in the original, the fact that the personality of the pill-popping protagonist is defined by little more than an EpiPen and the occasional recurring nightmare offers little chance for viewers to relate to the character on anything except the most superficial of levels. In jettisoning the contrast that essentially served as the heart of the original film, LaBute completely misses the point; choosing instead to rattle the viewer through cheap dream sequences and frustration-induced tension rather than peeling back the layers of tradition and society to truly make a lasting impact. Likewise, LaBute's blundering attempt to define the quest of his weary protagonist with a cheap plot twist revealed at the halfway mark does little more than test the patience of the viewer by passing off a painfully predictable plot twist as a moment of key revelation.Though the cinematography effectively captures the menacing beauty of the idyllic landscape and the commendable female cast may lead the casual viewer to suspect that this isn't your typical genre film, a fairly unmemorable score by Angelo Badalamenti and a laughably unhinged performance by Nicolas Cage (who actually channels the stiff smugness of original Wicker Man star Edward Woodward fairly effectively early on) steadily sink the entire affair as the pieces gradually fall into place. Though less forgiving critics of the original have frequently derided the instantly dated folk songs scattered throughout the soundtrack of that film, their notable absence in the remake may provide a symptomatic summary of why LaBute's remake is bound for the bargain bins while Robin Hardy and Anthony Schaffer's film will be fondly remembered for years to come; simply out, it's better to have a flawed classic that strives for excellence than an unimaginative remake that sacrifices originality for box-office profits and mainstream acceptance. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide