What’s this all about?
A small town cop suffering from some PTSD travels to a remote island to solve the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend’s daughter. On the island, he discovers a reclusive group of weird people who practice a pagan religion, and who do not welcome the intrusion of a traffic cop who’s way outside his jurisdiction.
The cop makes a series of bad decisions, screams and yells, waves a gun around, and eventually comes to several shocking, if stupid realizations.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Edward Malus,” who is a small town motorcycle police officer. You know? Just like Barney Fife. After receiving a letter from an old girlfriend about her missing daughter, he goes on the case, completely unprepared. You know? Just like Barney Fife.
Nick plays this character with the intensity turned almost all the way up, and makes sure to give the impression. mostly through stilted awkward dialog, that he’s never interacted with another human being before.
Who else is in this one?
Ellen Burstyn (“The Exorcist,” apparently) plays “Sister Summersisle”, the preachy, nature-loving leader of the weird cult that lives on the island. I think she’s supposed to come across like an old-fashioned enlightened proto-hippie, but she really just seem like she got lost on her way to the set of “Downton Abbey,” and had to slum it here, instead.
Leelee Sobieski plays “Sister Honey.” She’s in the cult, if her character’s name didn’t give that away. I felt like she was a lot more famous than she is. I remember her being in everything for a while, but looking at her IMDB page, there wasn’t a single thing that I remember. Anyway, she was fine.
Did you see that?
Near the climax of the film, the cultists are participating in a long parade, and everyone is dressed in animal costumes. Some of them are fairly simple (an animal mask), but others are very involved (a full body crow costume with feathers), but they all have a very old-fashioned and creepy feel to them.
Nick’s ex-girlfriend is wearing a detailed rabbit mask that covers her face from the nose up. It is mounted on a wooden handle, like masks you’d see on a fancy lady at an old-time costume party.
What perplexed me was that the mask clearly has tie-off points on the sides, which are meant to allow the wearer to use a piece of string to affix the mask to their face, negating the need for a handle.
Why would a mask have both? If it were tied on, the handle would just be stuck in the middle of the wearer’s face.
The handle would be inferior to the tie-ons in 100% of cases.The mask wouldn’t interfere with eating or speaking. So why would anyone opt to use it?
The answer to these questions, of course, is that the director was worried that we wouldn’t recognize the actress under a small mask, and so had an existing mask retrofitted with a handle so that she could take the mask down while speaking so that we rubes in the audience wouldn’t wonder why Nick was suddenly conspiring with a rabbit.
Somebody somewhere looked at those tie-offs and said, “nobody will notice these.” Checkmate. -Michael
This is a small point that will matter to no one but me… Nick’s place that he is in at the very beginning of the movie has my new front door. I love my new front door. It was exciting for me to see it in a movie. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts? (Michael/Sarah)
During the film’s climax, when Nick realizes that he’s been lured to the island to be killed, he looks at his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his child) and asks, “Why did you do this to me?”
It’s the only line in the movie in which Nick shows an emotion other than “screaming,” and the only one which feels like genuine human communication. -Michael
Please read the worst scene comments and then come back to this. I feel like the edited out ending produced both the best and worst of Nick in the movie. The torture made his over acting appropriate. I think his job leading upto his legs being broken and his begging for them to stop and let him go was very well done. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
This is tough. My notes list a scene during the climax in which Nick yells “Oh, my legs!” for seemingly no reason. It was weird and hammy, and made very little sense.
Then I realized that we’d watched the theatrical release, and thus seen an edited-down climax.
We went back and watched the uncensored version (just the climax, I’m not a glutton for punishment) and realized that this bit of dialog belonged to the scene in which Nick’s legs are broken by the cultists, where it made more sense.
I think I’m going to stick with the part of the climax where Nick is tortured by the cultists, though. Even in the unedited version, his reactions were weird and unnatural. Yes, this is the “not the bees!” scene. As the villlagers commit their acts of torture, it’s like Nick is narrating what they’re doing to him, just in case you weren’t sure how he felt about having his legs broke (he was against it, for the record).
Making it worse is the fact that it’s preceded by a scene in which Nick waves his Beretta 92 pistol around at a crowd, only to discover that the bullets have been removed. For those of you keeping score at home, a Berette 92 weighs 33 ounces (empty). 17 rounds of 9mm ammo weigh about 12 ounces. That means he failed to notice that his gun, which he carries throughout the movie, had been reduced in weight by over a quarter. -Michael
As Nick was exploring the island, he stopped to help a man put some logs back on a truck, for no apparent reason. He helps with one log when a bunch then fall off the truck. He then just leaves, even though the man is in far worse condition than when he came. Apparently because the man wouldn’t talk and thank him when Nick pulled him out of the way of falling logs, he just won’t continue to help. It was a ridiculous scene and poorly acted. -Sarah
How was the movie?
The 2006 version of The Wicker Man is a remake of a British film from the 70’s, which is considered, in some circles, a classic. I’ve never seen it, so I can’t weigh in directly, but I can see how a dark, moody thriller set in the English countryside in the 20th century could, at the very least, be enjoyably creepy.
The remake is almost charmless. I think we’re supposed to initially see the island society as somewhat idyllic, if insular and weird, and then slowly realize the true horrors behind it. To me, the movie felt like a trap the minute Nick set foot on the island. I was completely unsurprised to learn what the cultists had planned for him.
There’s a documentary called Con Mum, which details how an English chef got scammed out of a fortune by a woman claiming to be his long-lost rich mother. Throughout that film, I kept wondering, “Why did this scammer pick this victim?” and “How did she know his personal details so well?” Then, I slowly realized that the scammer was, in fact, his actual mother, and the realization was viscerally shocking. I feel like that’s what the filmmakers were going for here, but instead they got “the obvious murderers murdered him.”
The film also walks a fine line of intensity, and does a bad job. The theatrical release cut a lot of the more brutal scenes, which left the ending feeling weird and unexplained. The uncensored version took the violence too far, in my opinion, and just came across as violence porn. -Michael
Honestly it was a bit long and boring. I just didn’t get into it. It wasn’t scary or disturbing. I just kept waiting for it to do more. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
It wasn’t very good. -Michael
It was okay. I don’t recommend it, but you can make it through if needed. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
You can rent it on Amazon Prime.
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