The Wicker Man (**3/4)

? Neil LaBute (The Shape of Things) remakes (and transplants from Scotland to Washington state) the 1973 semi-classic British occult thriller about a policeman who seeks a missing child on a remote island to find. Here played by Nicolas Cage, the policeman finds a strange society that seems to be trying to hide the truth.

+ Notwithstanding the complaints below, I was intrigued by the weird premise. Wisely, LaBute resisted the urge to tinker with the ending, which is the most memorable thing about the movie, even though I guessed it about 15 or 20 minutes ahead. The way the people speak is fairly natural if you accept the premise that these people have mostly separated themselves from society.

- As I said, I guessed the ending. Besides that, one of LaBute’s major alterations is to make the island society a matriarchal society. While this is potentially interesting, we never do get to see how, or to what end, the men have been turned into mute drudges. In this and other ways, I was not sold on the reality of this place. That the remake is set in the present day doesn’t help. The policeman’s failing cell phone is a reminder of how unlikely it is that such a society could remain so isolated in the age of the Internet. LaBute’s films, especially the ones he’s written, tend to focus on the psychology of individual behavior, and he seems on less-sure ground when trying to create a whole society, even if he had Anthony Shaffer’s original novel and screenplay to work with. Another change from Shaffer’s original concept is that the policeman has no obvious spirituality of his own, so that the pagan rituals on the island are merely a nefarious curiosity to him, not a challenge to his own belief system.

= **3/4 I think people will probably fall into three categories with this movie. Some people will probably find it ludicrous from the get-go, others like me will be disappointed in the execution, and some others will simply accept the movie as a brilliant thriller with a great twist ending. I now want to see the 1973 version.

IMDb link