"The Wicker Man" (2006)
"The Wicker Man" is, in fact, better than remakes like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Dawn of the Dead", but not for the reasons that I thought it would be. The dialogue, a stand out positive in LaBute's previous films, is merely average fare. On top of that, character motivation has taken a back seat to plot, which is something that the original had the other way around. It surprises me that the best aspects of LaBute's writing would not come into play, especially with content as character-centered as the original "The Wicker Man".
Where the remake excels is in its sense of environment. I always thought that critics sold LaBute's camera control short, as "Your Friends and Neighbors" was an unusually tightly-controlled, highly visual film. I would hope that this would no longer be a problem for critics of LaBute's work after seeing "The Wicker Man", which sucks the viewer into its beautiful island setting, and allows them to really get a feeling for what is happening on screen. This technique allows the viewer to be tossed around in the film's story more aptly. While they may not connect with Cage's character on a personal level, they can travel with him from place to place, and like the protagonist, truly feel trapped within the island's confines.
Where the film has trouble, is sometimes what should seem desperate and frantic, comes across as silly and mildly offensive. This has to be due to LaBute's lack of experience in scaring people. He wants to work the film into a fever pitch, and fails in the end (aside from some somewhat disturbing mask design) to achieve any kind of genuine fear. This comes not because the characters' motivations are unclear, but because the director's technique isn't violent enough, and doesn't show us what it needs to in order to scare us. Screaming, “My legs!” isn't as effective as showing the legs being broken, and comes across more as a laugh than anything else.
For Neil LaBute, "The Wicker Man" is an excusable failure. He tried to do something different, and succeeded in some ways to make his picture a compliment to the original, and not a replacement. Overall however, this movie fails to achieve the depth of its predecessor, and also fails to frighten its audience. He may do some things well, but a scary movie that doesn't scare its audience is critically flawed.
