If you’re killing time channel surfing and come across the last 10 minutes of The Wicker Man, by all means put down the remote. Chances are it will be the most entertaining 10 minutes of your day. You needn’t make a full investment in The Wicker Man to fully appreciate the silly heights this would-be horror picture reaches. One glimpse of Nicolas Cage running around in a bear suit during the supposedly tense climax and you pretty much get the idea. The Wicker Man, a remake of the 1973 film of the same name, has a woefully inert start, then slowly, ever so slowly, makes its way toward all-out ludicrousness. How did everyone – from Cage to writer-director Neil LaBute (Nurse Betty) to the usually cautious studio suits behind the picture – fail to realize early on what a disastrous course they had set? The story follows motorcycle cop Edward Malus (Cage) as he investigates the disappearance of a little girl on a private island community in the Pacific Northwest. The moment he steps among them, the locals flaunt their weirdness rather than try to conceal it. Something fishy certainly is going on here, and not just because some of residents walk around wearing fish masks.
