So Bad It's Terrible -- THE WICKER MAN (2006)

I love bad movies--a deep, true love without irony and only a hint of malice.

My idea of a good time is getting people together with a couple drinks and taking the piss out of some poor fool's honest effort at filmmaking. By this point, the world has caught up with the joys of playing the home version of MST3K, and seemingly everybody has a favorite bad movie. There is no shortage of bad movies that have been agreed upon as "classics" and are must-sees for anyone hoping to have fun with an unintentional comedy. Most of them, like Birdemic and Fateful Findings, are truly awful in their execution and helplessly funny in their sincerity--ideal for a perfect bad movie night.

But not all bad movies are created equal. There are the bad movies that are not fun, not hilarious, simply bad--stiff, boring, joyless. These are the movies have no redeeming qualities even in their most memorable moments. These are the movies that make people like me angry, especially when the world at large recognizes them for something they simply are not. On one side of the spectrum we have Sharknado, a series that is gleefully bad on purpose and yet doesn't do a lot to stand out from your typical Scary Movie fare--stupid, yes, and ruining the definition of "so bad its good," but ultimately harmless.

On the other side, we have the movies that are exhumed from the ashes of their dismal box office returns and held up in campy reverence when they were better off remaining forgotten. These movies are what memes are made of, doomed to be an ironic joke that everyone is in on until it inevitably implodes into anti-comedy. And what is arguably the most iconic, overused, anti-joke in Internet history?

Well, I say, no more. I cannot let the memes represent this film any longer. I cannot abide another day of all the top ten lists out there lying to the bad movie novices of the world. Please, listen when I tell you that The Wicker Man is a terrible film in every sense of the word.

The original Wicker Man and its remake follow essentially the same plot: a police officer is summoned to a secluded island where a young girl has gone missing. When he asks the locals about the child, they give conflicting stories--some claim she's dead, others say alive, and some claim to not recognize her at all--and they seem amused by the officer's growing frustration. He discovers that the island is economically dependent on their crops and the people have turned to paganism to encourage bountiful harvests. The staunchly Christian policeman observes their practices with confusion and horror, and it only encourages his frantic search for the missing girl. What little evidence he collects leads him to suspect the girl will be sacrificed at the approaching May Day celebration, so he infiltrates the festivities hoping to find her before the lord of the isle can reach her first. He realizes all too late that it's all been a ruse from the beginning, and the real sacrifice is him. The film ends with the officer locked in the belly of the enormous Wicker Man as the islanders light the pyre and sing a song, joyfully watching their sacrifice burn.

To get it right out of the way, I do love the original Wicker Man. However, that love is not blind enough to not notice that it's a bit of a mess, at least the cut I have. The film was famously hacked to pieces by the ratings board upon its original UK release, and although a director's cut does exist today, you have to check the box very carefully to know which version you're ordering on Amazon (I did not). Either version is far from perfect. It's the seventies, so things like sluggish pacing and stilted acting are forgivable, even charming. Other things--like the casual nudity, impromptu musical numbers, and wacky paganism--are just as baffling as they are deliriously entertaining.

If the song doesn't get stuck in your head, the wall-smack ass-dance will.

But then again, this disjointed dreamy style seems entirely intentional, in order to place the audience in the same position as our hero, Sgt. Howie (an adorably uptight Edward Woodward). We are as confused as he is throughout the film, following clues that lead nowhere while the cagey townsfolk stand aside and snicker. It makes that final twist all the more effective when we realize the entire thing was an elaborate game, not to cover up a murder but to lead a lamb to slaughter. What the film lacks in rational sense, it more than makes up for in sheer weirdness. And if nothing else, Christopher Lee's performance as the too-cool turtleneck wearing pagan philosopher is worth the price of admission.

Fast forward to 2006, and our post-9/11 world is fraught with swaggering cool guys, gritty yellow filters, and aimless anger at no particular source.

Let's start with Nicolas Cage, because why would we begin anywhere else? Let me make this perfectly clear: I love me some Nic Cage. I can get in a Raising Arizona quote-off with the best of them. I place Face/Off not only as one of my favorite movies of all time, but also the only action movie I'll ever need. One day, I'll write out all my feelings about Vampire's Kiss as the masterpiece that it truly is. I love Nic Cage in the most unironic way any woman can.

Exhibit A.

That's why it hurts me so deeply that this is the performance my fellow bad movie lovers hold up as the best of Crazy Cage. It is simply not the case. He's too National Treasure in this for my tastes, cool and controlled--mumbling all his lines with that jaguar-purr voice of his like a low-rent Jeff Goldblum and barely creasing his magnificent face beyond a stoic scowl. It's disappointing given what the internet prepared me for. He is so reserved and low-key in the bulk of this movie that it's almost a relief when he starts sucker-punching women. Once he finally cracks and the "How'd it get burned?!" scene appears, I am so thoroughly checked out of the film that I don't even care how hysterical he is.

Even the famous "Not the bees!" scene couldn't save this sinking ship, which explains why it wasn't included in the theatrical cut. With its popularity as the absolute funniest thing to say anytime someone mentions bees, it's easy to forget that the iconic moment is completely pointless within context. The villagers pour bees in his bonnet till he passes out, only to instantly revive him with a hit of EpiPen so he can be awake to meet the title character. Completely, utterly pointless. It was nothing before the internet, and it's less than nothing now.

Aside from the fleeting moments of Crazy Cage in the final act, the movie offers nothing in the ways of entertainment value, leaving plenty of time for me to just sit back and notice how hateful it is. Not as in "I hate this movie" (which I do, obviously), as in the film's essence, the bitter mood that permeates every frame. This movie is marinated in thick, salty hate gravy that has a very direct and blatant target, and it's all thanks to an angry little man named Neil LaBute.

This is a guy who has a booming social life and doesn't participate on even one hateful message board.

If you're familiar with LaBute's other work, you'll know that his material tends to be infused with a palpable anger towards women. One only needs to watch about four minutes of this scene to get a real clear idea of how the man's mind works, and how much he would like to convince you that his view is the unsentimental truth. You could argue his work is strictly satirical and thus a thoughtful commentary on toxic masculinity, but there is a line between satire and rampant misogynist fantasy. LaBute is either unaware of that line, or he's actively dry humping it while flipping you off and screaming "Just think about it, maaaaan!"

Though the two Wicker Man films are similar in many ways, LaBute made a few tweaks to mold his vision of the story. Namely, he made Summerisle a matriarchal society where the few men that live there have their tongues removed and serve as laborers. To hammer in that imagery just a little deeper, the island's main export was changed from apples to honey...meaning bees...meaning a queen surrounded by witless male drones to do her bidding...and macho man Nic Cage is deathly allergic to bees. Subtle.

WOMEN ARE SCARY!

Remember that trend in sci-fi movies back in the day of men discovering lost civilizations or alien races comprised entirely of sexy ladies? There was a glut of these in the '50s and '60s, blatant male fantasies where one or two dudes stumble into a tribe of exotic babes who have never seen a man before and are just dying to have someone tell them what to do. Wicker Man is like that, but in reverse--it carries itself with that same smug air of the masculine know-it-all stumbling into the land of women, but instead of portraying the women as empty-headed natives, they are a calculating pit of vipers. They know exactly what a man is, what he wants, and what to do with him. Even LaBute's dumb sexy fantasies are injected with an insecure, paranoid dread towards the opposite sex.

The remake makes an interesting choice by pitting one man against an all-woman society, but fails to do anything interesting with it in terms of commentary, if that was indeed the intent. The villagers speak in veiled language like the first film in order to mislead our hero, but the added female factor makes it feel like a pointed jab. Worse than the double-speak are the non-answers, Cage's direct questions earning no more than a menacing giggle in response.

If LaBute is trying to say something with all this, it comes across as little more than a man screaming into a camera about how girls are so weird and scary. I just get this image of some moment during production with Ellen Burstyn approaching him to ask about a scene and LaBute just gaping back at her in terrified confusion as he attempts to understand how she's making noise come out of her face-vagina.

You are a sad, strange little man.

Aside from being inherently sexist and not nearly as provocative as it thinks it is, The Wicker Man's greatest crime is that it is boring as all hell. Even if you can squeeze a smidge of enjoyment out of Cage's mild freakouts or the absolutely baffling way in which he's dispatched, it is not worth the dismal slog it takes to get there.

 This film does not deserve a spot on your bad movie list. It is purely, concretely, irrevocably bad from top to bottom, completely unworthy of the fame it has achieved from its laughable awfulness. There are such better bad movies out there, and such better Nicolas Cage movies, and that Venn diagram is so often a beautiful perfect circle. There are better ways to waste your time.

Trust me, I am a Nic Cage expert. 

Exhibit B.

 So please, if you must deduce the gifts of Nicolas Cage to a meme, make it a performance that is actually meme-worthy.