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Rish's Reviews
I'm not the fan of the original Wicker Man that tyranist is. That probably has something to do with me being able to stomach the remake and not thoroughly despise it as many people have.
Nicolas Cage plays a police officer who is haunted by a mysterious/tragic experience in the line of duty. When he gets a letter from an old girlfriend, now living on the incredibly sheltered Summersisle island, asking for help in finding her vanished daughter, he goes there, hoping to put his old ghosts behind him. What he finds there is a religious community more unusual than the Amish, more twisted than the Jehovah's Witnesses, and more deceptive than the Scientologists.
Have I offended everyone yet?
Wicker Man 2006 is basically the same film as the film that inspired it. Sans the songs, of course. And the nudity. Oh, and it has a new prologue and coda (the prologue is pretty great, the coda lasts three times longer than necessary). There have been a couple new details (including an actual connection to one of the characters) that help the movie quite a bit. There are several new details, however, that don't work as well.
I liked the little reference to the star of the original (Cage's character's first name was Edward, and his ex-fiance's last name was Woodward). And I like Nicolas Cage. What works in the film is mainly due to him and his performance. There were some very creepy moments (most of them in the form of dreams and/or hallucinations), and due to that (but also due to its being more of a horror film than its predecessor and my having seen it in the theatre), it was a scarier film than Wicker Man '73. There are also a couple of really odd moments, as well as a seemingly-supernatural subplot, that don't really add up if you think about it at the end.
I found the townspeople even more infuriating than those in the original, mostly because they had American accents and a haughty, sneering way about them. I was going to put "Fire" as the Weapon of Choice, but then I saw, that in tyranist's original review of the film, he put "Lies." I think that works even better.
I've heard the film described as feminist and misogynistic. Can one be both?
I was surprised at the vitriol spewed upon this film by critics and audiences. Was it really that bad? No. But remakes are nasty things, and that may have a lot to do with it.
One thing I wish I had mentioned in my anti-remakes essay is that it's always easier to redo something someone else has created than to create something new yourself. I knew a guy who could ALWAYS see what was wrong with the stories/scripts I'd write or the movies he'd see, but was literally incapable of creating something of his own. And that's another thing that's both good and bad about remakes. It's nice to take a step back and look at a work of art, seeing its flaws and highlights, and then recreate that, taking out or changing the things you don't think worked, and focusing on the the things that did. Perhaps that's the reason the new "Battlestar Galactica" is so great. That, and loads of hard work, inspiration, and talent.
Best Scare: A couple dream/hallucination moments are pretty nice
I'd Recommend It To: Huge Nicolas Cage fans, people who will never ever ever never see the original, for whatever reason.
Posted: October 20, 2006

Total Skulls: 17

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?