The Wicker Man: Review By NickScottGuyer

Wicker Man is a ridiculous film. Directed by Jon Labute, the film begins with a police officer named Edward (Nicolas Cage) riding on a motorcycle when a cabbage patch-looking doll is thrown out of the car by a little girl in front of him. Edward attempts to return the doll to her when an eerie semi truck collides with the car. In an effort to save her the car explodes and catches on fire. Three weeks later, he gets a letter from an old fiancé, Willow Woodland (Kate Beahan). In the letter she says she has a daughter named Rowan, who has been missing for two weeks. Willow asks Edward to help her find her daughter on a private island called Summers isle. The picture of Willow’s daughter is similar to the girl Edward saw in the car crash. As Edward journeys to the secluded island, he uncovers a belief system that involves strange and disturbing harvest ceremonies and estranged ritual sacrifices of the town’s ancestors.

Nicolas Cage is overreacting to the plot and situation of the film as he is either screaming or yelling at someone with unnecessary vulgar language when there is no reason for it. At one point, Nicolas says “oh you broke my leg” when you can clearly understand what is happening from the sounds of bones cracking. Nicolas needs to act the emotions and actions of the character, not narrate them. Beahan , from other brilliant thrillers as Flightplan is spectacular in this film. Portraying a mother grieving over the absence of her daughter, Beahan Once again delivers one character that interested me. She can capture the tone of the film in one look. She is the only reason I wanted to come to the concluding of this film.

The twist is a turn of a plot that no one expects. The sisters of Summersile are very spiritual. The bees on the island provide them with sweet honey every year. To that effect Edward (Nicolas Cage) is allergic to bees. This film gets more increasingly violent than scary. Nicolas Cage does not tackle the emotions of a father grieving to find his lost child. In one specific scene, he kicks in the face of a 21 year-old girl, then soccer-punches her in the face that throws her into a wall where she collapses, knocked out. This effect is extremely violent for a horror movie. Nicolas seems more like he is acting for the role of a new member on the sopranos.

As he yells, screams, and overreacts at the locals like a raging lunatic, the audience will completely lose interest and wonder what Cage was thinking when he portrayed this character. This movie is a extreme letdown, for it embodies more violence than horror thrills. I would not recommend this movie to anyone; although you may enjoy it, it hardly seems possible. The movie might as well be called the “Sisterhood of Bees”