The Wicker Man and its remake: What went wrong?
In 1966, a young author named David Pinner had just published a comedic vampire novel called Fanghorn when he began writing a folk horror comedy called Ritual. In 1971 he ended up selling the rights to the novel to former spy, metal singer, and all-around cool guy Christopher Lee. This transaction would lead to one of the best horror movies ever made and the worst horror movies ever made which is really impressive if you think about it. Remakes can be good, bad, or somewhere in between but you also need to measure just how good the original was vs how bad the new one ended up. If the original was just ok, a bad remake isn’t as devastating as a great movie becoming an awful one. The Fog was the number 1 contender for this, until recently when I revisited The Wicker Man from 1973 and decided to watch The Wicker Man from 2006 for the first time. I should have taken the bees. Check your crops and make sure it’s not a trap as we see what went wrong with the Nicolas Cage remake of the Wicker Man.
The Wicker Man has apparently been on the remake docket since the early 90s and what we ended up with was a case of dueling versions looking to get made at the same time. Christopher Lee was going to partner with original director Robin Hardy and Vanessa Redgrave to make a spiritual remake where Lee was the good guy titled The Riding of the Laddie. This wouldn’t end up coming to fruition, but it would be reworked for the spiritual sequel called The Wicker Tree, which, ehhhhh, its fine but definitely not mandatory. Saturn Films, which is Nicolas Cage’s production company, had the rights in 2002 and the distribution passed from Universal to Millennium and eventually Alcon through Warner Bros. Neil LaBute would write and direct the project, and it would film in July of 2005 in Vancouver Canada. The lead role would go to Nicolas Cage who was at a weird time in his career. While he was a decade past his Oscar winning role and his big three action masterpieces of The Rock, Face/Off, and Con Air, he was still at the end of his first prime with stuff like The Weather Man, World Trade Center, and Lord of War.
It’s hard to fully blame him here as even with him being at a high level of Cageyness, the script does him no favors. The script and direction really don’t do ANYONE on the acting side any favors and that includes the likes of Ellen Burstyn, Leelee Sobieski, Molly Parker, and Frances Conroy who are all pretty reliable usually. Burstyn is a 6-time Oscar nominee and when given the right material in a horror movie like The Exorcist or Requiem for a Dream, yeah, I said it, it’s a horror movie, she can absolutely deliver the goods. Cage hadn’t really done any horror up to this point except for maybe 8MM but would show he had it in him later with Mandy and Colour Out of Space. LaBute hasn’t really done many other horror projects but it’s also hard to consider what this turned out to be a horror either. What happened here?
The movie opens with Nic Cage’s character Edward, who is a cop getting in the middle of a terrible accident before jumping ahead slightly to him receiving a letter from his ex-wife that her daughter is missing. He goes to the remote island off the coast of Washington where she is and encounters a whole Neo Pagan civilization where he gets no answers or help from the locals. They are often rude to him or unwilling to help and when he finds out that the missing girl is his daughter Rowan, he searches the whole island for her while uncovering what this island and its people are about. He thinks he leads the girl to safety, but it turns out that he was a patsy the entire time. He is stung by bees and burned alive in a giant Wicker Man as a sacrifice to improve the fortunes of the island. While this sounds like it could potentially be horrifying, it isn’t. At least not in the way I’m sure the movie intended it to be anyway.
To fully understand the folly of the remake, we need to look at the genius of the original in 1973’s The Wicker Man. Christopher Lee was approaching his 50s in the early 1970s and by this point had already had a full career. Hell, he was probably the most well-known Dracula at this point having played the Count so many times. What he wanted though were more interesting roles. Roles with depth. He and Anthony Shaffer along with Robin Hardy had the rights to a novel called Ritual but decided that a direct adaptation would be problematic, so they loosely based it on the property but made many changes of their own. Lee would star as Lord Summerisle and the movie would also feature Edward Woodward as Sergeant Howie, Britt Ekland as Willow, and Ingrid Pitt as the Librarian.
Sgt Howie of West Highlands gets an anonymous letter sent to him to come to Summerisle and investigate the disappearance of a young girl named Rowan Morrison. The island is of Pagan belief and Howie is a deeply Christian man, so the two sides are at odds almost immediately. The town is mostly very kind to the constable, with the daughter of the inn keeper even trying to seduce him but also laugh off what he is working towards and saying he probably shouldn’t be here. Howie learns that the island began to shift towards paganism when Lord Summerisle’s descendants made them believe it was due to those ideas that the crops and island began to prosper. He also finds out that Rowan was the last May Queen and that the crops didn’t prosper. This revelation and the fact that Rowan’s grave is empty lead him to the conclusion that Rowan is still alive, but the island is going to sacrifice her to appease their gods and get a better crops result.
The Sergeant is a stranger in a strange land but plays along with the festivities until he finds Rowan alive and seemingly about to be sacrificed. He rescues her but the relief is short lived as Rowan actually leads him to Lord Summerisle and the people who are actually going to sacrifice HIM. He is in a position of power, a virgin, and came willingly. His sacrifice will ensure a better year of crops, and nobody feels an ounce of remorse for it. Howie is changed into a gown and cleaned before he is led to a giant Wicker Man where he and a scattering of animals are sacrificed as the sun goes down and the islanders sing a song of triumph. There is no last-minute rescue and there is no salvation.
That uh, that sounds an awful lot like the description of the 06 version yeah? It does because the remake tried very hard to keep the story similar. Nobody needs a shot for shot remake like what happened to Psycho, but you can also make a completely different movie that has the soul of what the original was. It’s not the same thing at all but I think Midsommar is a better remake than Wicker Man 06. It’s easy to see what they tried to do but what went so wrong? Some of it is just feel or style. Nic Cage’s character having a gun and using kung fu moves is so incredibly stupid as are the islanders acting like the bad guys from Resident Evil 4 and coming after him to fight. One choice that is a hard pass for me is making the main character tied to the events on the island. We don’t need that at all. The only reason Howie is tied to the island is because he actually does have jurisdiction over them. Legally. Edward, an on the nose callback to the actor who portrayed Howie in the original film, has absolutely no authority over the people of the island in the remake. What’s worse is that Howie gets an anonymous letter in the original and truly knows no one on the island or even their story whereas Edward is contacted by his ex-wife and even more egregious, the child is his. It’s the equivalent of making Michael Myers Laurie’s brother instead of just having him be a crazy slasher. We don’t need the protagonist to be tied to the events.
Some other choices that fall flat are wasting a good cast and the music. Burstyn’s Sister Summerisle amounts to nothing more than a mustache twirling villain and any power you could have had with the gender swap or importance with the island is wasted by underdeveloped ideas and scripting. Lee is a man of the people who interacts with everyone and doesn’t put himself above anyone else, including his understanding at the end when a desperate Howie is screaming at him that if the crops fail nothing short of his sacrifice will appease the gods. Lee’s face changes to a slight worry because he knows this to be true. The music choices don’t work either as the remake tends to go for a more bombastic and louder or dramatic score while the happier or quieter tones of the original suit it much better. Basically, what I’m saying is it’s a worse script, it’s shot worse, scored worse, has worse acting, and the changes are dumb but hey, besides that its probably ok, right? Well, there’s just one more tiny detail. A complete lack of the two religions being at odds.
06 decided to make the cop character much more involved in the story and sacrifice through his relationship with one of the citizens of the island but what they sacrificed there was the character’s relationship to God. There are a couple of slightly different versions of the remake but neither include that aspect whereas there are 3 versions of the original, the theatrical, director’s cut, and final cut, but no matter which one you choose, final cut being my favorite, it’s still a battle between Christianity and Paganism. Howie is there as member of the crown’s army, yes, but he is also there as a representation of Christianity. They don’t believe the same things as he does sure, but he outright refuses to acknowledge anything they believe in as anything but crimes against God or each other. He never fully understands or acknowledges their ways and it’s his hubris which conceals from him the very real fact that he has always been the target.
This change also changes the complexion of the ending. While the bees scene is as bad as it’s made out to be, hilariously bad or not, the impact of the sacrifice is lessened and even Edward’s cries of “Oh God” don’t resonate as much. Howie crying “Jesus Christ” is terrifying because he is calling out to his believed savior for help and a part of him already knows he won’t be saved. The camera lingers on Howie’s fate for an uncomfortable amount of time alternating between close-ups of the doomed man and his wicker prison. Eventually we stop hearing him and whether it was the flames or the fumes that killed him is irrelevant as the sun goes down on both the day and the constable’s life. His death is physically horrifying yes, but spiritually it’s a nightmare because of his stern and unwavering beliefs and yet he was used as a sacrifice for something he staunchly doesn’t believe in.
To be honest, I hadn’t even seen the remake all the way through until this viewing. I had no interest. The original was my brother’s favorite movie, and he was the one that got me into all the great horror things that I love. I gave it a shot to see if it was really as bad as its reputation and yes, it absolutely is. Maybe it had to be though. Maybe The Wicker Man 06 was sacrificed so that we could have a crop of good horror remakes down the line. What went wrong with the remake is basically everything, so please gather your followers and let’s put our DVD and Blu-ray copies in a giant wicker man to hope that they let the classic be. Not the bees, NEVER the bees.
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