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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 66130
Released: December 19, 2006 |
| Our Price: $2.36 |
| Used Price: $0.01 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Out patrolling a California highway, police officer Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) stops a station wagon to return a little girl's lost doll. Moments later, a runaway truck slams into the station wagon, igniting it into a fiery wreck with the mother and child trapped inside. Edward fails to save them before the car explodes...and then spends months of his life choking down pills to get the image of their faces out of his head. But Edward is about to get a second chance. A desperate letter from his former girlfriend, Willow (Kate Beahan), arrives at his home with no postmark. Willow came into his life and left just as unexpectedly years before. But now, her daughter Rowan has gone missing, and Edward is theonly person she trusts to help locate her. She asks him to come to her home on a private island - Summersisle - a place with its own traditions where people observe a forgotten way of life. Edward seizes the opportunity to make his life right again, and soon finds himself on a seaplane bound for the islands of the Pacific Northwest. But nothing is what it seems on isolated Summersisle, where a culture, dominated by its matriarch Sister Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn), is bound together by arcane traditions and a pagan festival called "the Day of Death and Rebirth." The secretive people of Summersisle only ridicule his investigation, insisting that a child named Rowan never existed there... or if she ever did was no longer alive. But what Edward doesn't know is that Willow's plea for help has invited more into his life than a chance for redemption. In unraveling Summersisle's closely held secrets, Edward is drawn into a web of ancient traditions and murderous deceit, and each step he takes closer to the lost child brings him one step closer to the unspeakable. And one step closer to the Wicker Man.
Description of The Wicker Man (Full Screen Unrated/Rated Edition):
Nicolas Cage stars in The Wicker Man as a traumatized police officer investigating a lost girl on a mysterious, mist-shrouded island of imperious women and dimwitted men. Summoned by his ex-fiancee (Kate Beahan, Flightplan, who seems to have borrowed her lips from Angelina Jolie), Edward Malus (Cage, Adaptation.) blusters his way into a closed religious community by flashing his out-of-state badge around and insulting everyone he meets. To describe The Wicker Man any further would deprive viewers of enjoying the staggering ineptness of this absurd remake of the fairly creepy 1973 original. Despite a talented cast (including Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream, Molly Parker, Deadwood, and Leelee Sobieski, Joy Ride), the performances are uniformly awful, with Cage leading the pack; his overwrought cries of "How'd it get burned?!?" will provoke barks of laughter. Arbitrary wierdness abounds--ranging from animal masks to a body-stocking of bees--in a flailing effort to distract the audience from the narrative running madly off the rails. Maybe writer/director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things) aspired to create a fever dream of male fears about women, but the result is a deformed hybrid of Invasion of the Bee Girls and The Village. A future camp classic. --Bret Fetzer
The Wicker Man (Full Screen Unrated/Rated Edition) Reviews:
why all the negative reviews? 
2009-12-20 - I had to double check the version of this movie that I own after seeing the overwhelmingly negative reviews on Amazon. Yep, this is the right version with Nick Cage etc. I realize I am a minority here, but I enjoyed the movie--not the best I have every seen but FAR from being the worst, as many reviewers claim. I never saw the original, so I had nothing to compare it to. I found the plot to be somewhat predictable, although the ending did have a twist to it. The acting was average; I have never thought of Cage as being a "good" actor, but he does OK. The plot and acting were not THAT bad, seriously. The island scenery was beautiful. The bee keeping/feminist/goddess/sacrifice aspect was a bit of a off, but not to the point where I could not enjoy the movie. I don't know why there are so many reviews absolutely trashing this movie, I would encourage anyone to give it a chance.
FRIGHTFULLY BAD 3 OUT OF 10 
2009-11-23 - Have you ever had those moments in life in which you see a film years ago and you thought it was okay back then, but then when you watch it again it sucks? That's what happened when I watched this film. I thought it was okay three years ago, but then I watched it again and realized that it was a truly bad horror/suspense film. Now I have raved about a number of films that I think people unfairly victimize for being different, but sadly, this film isn't one of those films. This is a laughably bad horror film that has to be witnessed to be believed at how shoddy this film is.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT: The film starts off with the main character Edward Malus (Played by washed up actor Nicholas Cage) and a car crash which leaves him depressed. But then out of the blue, he receives a letter his ex-fiancee named Willow who wants him to come to an island known as Summersisle, in which she claims that her daughter; Rowan; who is allegedly Edward's daughter as well has been kidnapped by the cult that runs the island. So Edward travels to the island to find out what has happened to Rowan and uncovers a sinister plot full of lies, and there is no escaping from it.
MUSIC: It's a shame that such a good musical score was wasted for such an awful film. The music excels and is well-composed (Unlike the film) which is why I think it should have been used for a much better film.
ACTION: This film is boring and is certainly not scary. The only shocking part about this film is the ending (Which is on side A of the disc because of the alternate ending), but other than that this film is a complete mess. The script is a ham-fisted, worthless effort that goes nowhere and doesn't come together. It's a grungy, disjointed mess. Most of the film is Nicholas Cage wandering aimlessly throughout the island continuously asking about Rowan and no one bothers to answer him. This film has no suspense involved because you don't care what happens, and you'll never root for Nicholas Cage. This film fails spectacularly as a horror film and as a suspense film.
ACTING: This was just appalling. Nicholas Cage puts on a horrendous performance as a cop. He seems bored and makes his performance even worse with laughable dialogue that is never believable. Everyone else puts on terrible performances as well and you're not scared of them as a cult, they just look and sound ridiculous (Wait till you see Sister Summersisle's face paint for the festival, it looks like face paint they use at football games). But then again, I don't know whether to blame the actors themselves, or this horrendous script. Most likely it's both.
OVERALL: The only way anyone will ever enjoy this film is in a B-movie way. Everything about this film is laughably bad (A cult obsessed with bees?) from its ludicrous and disjointed plot, to the terrible acting, and to the laughable dialogue, this film is sure-fire miss. If for some reason you want to see this film, only rent it. This might appeal to some, but for everyone else, you should just avoid it. If you want a good horror film about a crazy cult that's actually scary, I suggest you try the superb Silent Hill instead of this tripe. No wonder this was voted as being one of the worst horror remakes of all time.
THE GOOD: Good music, some nice set designs, and the alternate ending was weird.
THE BAD: Ham-fisted script that goes nowhere, horrendous acting and dialogue, it's completely boring, it's not scary, and it's not suspenseful.
Forget Nicholas Cage. The truly awful performance is by Ellen Burstyn.
2009-10-19 - As other reviewers have pointed out, this is probably the worst movie ever made. The screen-play sounds like it was written by a high school sophomore who tried to re-write the original 1973 Wicker Man in order to pass it off as his own work for a creative writing assignment. The Christian-versus-pagan theme that framed the original story has been replaced by some weird feminist cult that apparently worships bees. Apparently, the writer and director must have felt that it'd be too difficult or controversial to make a movie with an evangelical Christian protagonist that ends with the pagans being shown in a bad light, so instead we have some weird feminist bee cult opposed to "normal people." Okay, whatever.
A lot of people have remarked on Nicholas Cage's performance ("Oh Gob, the bees!"), but the true stinker here is Ellen Burstyn. The 70-something former soap actress simply does not ooze menace, and if Burstyn hadn't made so many other films, this role would probably have been a career-killer. Her portrayal of Lord Summersisle is so horrifically bad (in the unintended way) that I suspect it'd give Christopher Lee a coronary if he ever saw this film.
The cinematography is also amazingly bad, with cheap Halloween props amid an unremitting orange color scheme. I can't believe that director LaBute didn't see the sets and immediately fire the entire set-design team. This is easily the ugliest, cheeziest-looking film ever.
But it's worth viewing once, just to see Nicholas Cage punch fat girls and wear a bear suit.
Bruce Willis could have saved Edward 
2009-10-17 - He could have appeared in his trademark vest, with machine gun at the end to save Edward (Nicholas Cage). He didn't and I was grateful for that. So is it as awful as most of the reviewers here are making out? Well frankly no. Its actually a decent film, especially if you haven't seen the original version (which I strongly recommend you watch first). Nicholas Cage does his usual good acting job and is as always is very watchable. Ellen Burstyn is very good but woefully under-used. Its not badly directed and the core of the story is mainly similar to the original play.
The problem with this film IS the original version. The original is better in nearly every respect and whilst this isn't a shot for shot remake like the stupid remake of Psycho a few years ago, its pretty close and because of that rather pointless. Key elements from the original film are missing from this version. Most importantly Nicholas Cage's character isn't devout, he isn't really even tempted by the women, so the reason for him being 'chosen' is pretty unclear.
So its not a bad film, but for anybody reading this please see the original version first, then watch this.
Absolutely Abysmal Film
2009-10-03 - If you want to see a decent version of this film, watch the original, which, though dated, has an ending that is truly chilling and horrifying. This version is absolutely abysmal.
