20 Years Later, An Infamous Folk Horror Remake Is Still Bad — But Not For The Reasons You Think

Warner Bros. Pictures

At the end of the 1973 movie The Wicker Man, a man is burned alive inside of a giant wooden effigy while townspeople sing and dance. It is a profoundly bleak, unsettling moment. The 2006 remake of The Wicker Man ends in much the same way, only instead of being disquieting, it is an absolute hoot and a holler when the titular wicker man — with Nicholas Cage inside — goes up in flames. Rather than be a worthy adaptation of a seminal work of folk horror, it's one of the funniest unintentional comedies ever made.

The 2006 Wicker Man, which celebrates its 20th anniversary today, is a cinematic travesty when compared with the original film. Directed by Robin Hardy, the '70s movie followed Sergeant Neil Howie, an uptight, moral Christian police officer who travels to a Scottish island commune to investigate a missing person's report. Once there, he finds the community, a group of pagans led by an eerily charismatic Christopher Lee, who claim to have no knowledge of the missing girl; instead they slowly rope him into their May Day celebration. Somewhat corny folk songs (including one that's literally about corn) gradually give way to something more sinister, culminating in the reveal that the people of Summerisle lured Howie here to sacrifice him so that their crops would flourish. That several of the most upsetting scenes take place in the daylight, surrounded by flowers, only heightens the impact of the horror, and the collision between Howie's stiff-upper-lip British repression and the darkness underlying the free-loving lifestyle of the pagans is thematically rich.