Obviously, the 10-year-old "The Wicker Man" starring Oscar winner Nicholas Cage is not a perfect film by any means, but it looks a lot to me that this one has been voted down by pretentious retro intellectuals who think only because an original film was good, it must mean automatically that a modern remake is bad. This one here is not. It was written and directed by Neil LaBute and runs for 100 minutes. The core story is a cop who arrives at a mysterious island obviously controlled by a community of cult-like women. He is in charge of finding out what happens to a missing girl and gets involved deeper and deeper in the mystery of the island.
There were a couple parts that did not work entirely for me, for example the part about him being the father to the girl and the masks in the end also looked a bit ridiculous, but we have to keep in mind that the women on the island were all complete lunatics and did not see how ridiculous their actions were as if they were on some drug or something. Anyway, the setting makes this one a fairly atmospheric watch and I thought most of the performances were pretty good. Cage always delivers basically, especially when he plays cop characters. And I also liked the ending somehow. It goes against the traditional idea of how films have to end happily or on a positive note at least and this one here is the exact opposite. The epilogue with James Franco was not really necessary, but oh well, it's not bad enough to destroy the film either.
As a whole, do not be fooled by the rating here on IMDb or the film's reception by critics. This is far from a failure and has some really good moments occasionally, even if there is a bad one here and there too. But all in all, the good outweighs the bad and it is a decent watch if you are interested in mystery with a touch of supernatural and horror phenomenons. Or if you simply love Nicholas Cage. Thumbs up.
There were a couple parts that did not work entirely for me, for example the part about him being the father to the girl and the masks in the end also looked a bit ridiculous, but we have to keep in mind that the women on the island were all complete lunatics and did not see how ridiculous their actions were as if they were on some drug or something. Anyway, the setting makes this one a fairly atmospheric watch and I thought most of the performances were pretty good. Cage always delivers basically, especially when he plays cop characters. And I also liked the ending somehow. It goes against the traditional idea of how films have to end happily or on a positive note at least and this one here is the exact opposite. The epilogue with James Franco was not really necessary, but oh well, it's not bad enough to destroy the film either.
As a whole, do not be fooled by the rating here on IMDb or the film's reception by critics. This is far from a failure and has some really good moments occasionally, even if there is a bad one here and there too. But all in all, the good outweighs the bad and it is a decent watch if you are interested in mystery with a touch of supernatural and horror phenomenons. Or if you simply love Nicholas Cage. Thumbs up.