Y'know, our luck has been weird recently. When Mrs Doombreed and I have gone to the movies over the last few months, our choice of movies has either been excellent - The Illusionist, Invincible, Snakes On A Plane - or has been crap, like The Descent.
Well, you can add The Wicker Man to that last category.
Dire. Really, really dire.
Edward Malus (Nicholas Cage) is a police officer in California. In a bizarre opening series, Malus is involved in an accident where a mother and daughter are killed, but later finds out that no bodies were recovered from the car - and the car wasn't registered anywhere. Malus then gets a letter from an ex-fiancee of his, Willow (Kate Beahan), saying that her daughter, Rowan (Erika-Shaye Gair) has gone missing. Enclosed is a picture of Rowan. It's the girl from the car. Malus chases off to Summersisle and, though all the locals deny that the Rowan ever existed, makes his way, through an improbable series of events and weirdness, to the end of this painful movie.
Seriously, the plot has more holes than the PGA, the dialogue is stilted and horrible (Beahan, especially, seems constitutionally unable to complete any sentence), and our hero is about as dumb, arrogant, and unlikable as most people around the world assume all Americans are.
This is a remake of a classic British movie. The original, by the same title, was made in 1973 and is widely hailed as one of the most disturbing films ever made, and is a supremely agile tale of religions coming into conflict. The new version is widely hailed, by me, as a piece of crap not worthy of a footnote in any book that describes the original.
Doombreed rating: 1/2
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