by Darren Humphries

Created on: August 13, 2007

As ideas dry up and the inspiration drought continues, Hollywood has been forced into a spate of remaking old classic horror movies to fill the void. Fair enough, the film industry has a history of reworking old material and sometimes improving on it. Cecil B DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock even remade their own movies. The problem arises when the original is a classic of its genre and the modern film maker has nothing new to throw at it except technology and that is the case with the modern remake of THE WICKER MAN.

Both films follow the plot of a policeman travelling to a remote community in search of a missing girl who may have been murdered in the mistaken belief that human sacrifice will increase the harvests.

The original film was made in 1973 by Robin Hardy from a screenplay by playwright Anthony Schaffer. Despite being termed a horror movie, there is little to no blood in it at all. What there is, however, is a sense of unease from the very beginning that turns slowly to dread and and finally to horror when the truth about the titular wicker man is finally revealed (and no spoilers here). This is much more akin to a psychological thriller than a horror movie and the skewed camera angles and surreal behaviour (Britt Ekland's naked dance, sex in the cemetery, pagan rites and imagery at every turn) serve to deepen and reinforce that unease. It's also shot with a documentary-style roughness that heightens belief in what is happening on-screen.

Neil LaBute, director of the remake, has no idea about how he is going to recreate that sense of unease and surreal atmosphere. Firstly, he jettisons all of the pagan background material that proves to be the first film's whole justification, weakening the motivations of every character in the film. The few 'jump' moments in the film (truck opening, hanging over sharp blades in the barn, locked in the well) are pallid compared with the systematic attack on expectations and nerves in the original. All of this is presented in such a typically glossy Hollywood blockbuster fashion that it fails to connect with the audience.

Poor Nic Cage has no chance of making his shell-shocked, but vaguely moral police officer more than a pale reflection of the deeply christian and angry Edward Woodward character in the original because he is given nothing that could offend his sensibilities so deeply. The fact that the missing girl he is looking for might be his daughter doesn't replace that sense of absolute moral rectitude. The support cast can't help out either. Ellen Burstyn is far too cuddly to contain the inherent threat and spookiness that Christopher Lee brought to his Lord Summerisle and there is nobody to replace the sex appeal of the original's trio of Britt Ekland, Diane Cilento and Ingrid Pitt.

Like its close contemporary, THE OMEN, the 2006 THE WICKER MAN takes all that was great about the original and loses it, bringing nothing new to the party. The best to say about the film is that it will send you back to the original with fresh eyes for just how good it really is.

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