Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. One of our spies has seen Neil LaBute's remake of THE WICKER MAN and boy, he didn't like it much at all. I never heard of a screening here in Austin, so I can't comment on "Gandhiboy"'s opinion until I see the flick Friday when it opens. I want it to be good and there are certain aspects to this review that give me hope, but then there are also other aspects that take it right back away again. I'm pulling for the movie, though. LaBute's put out some great work before, so he's earned a bit of trust with me. At least a $6.50 matinee ticket's worth. Enjoy the review... some spoilers below, but he doesn't give away the new and improved ending, so... that's good, right?

I watched Neil LaBute's remake of "The Wicker Man" last night, and thought I would send along a review to you.

Right off the bat, let me say that I have seen the original 1973 version of "The Wicker Man," and I don't hold it in nearly in as high of esteem as other movie lovers. The film has a rabid cult following, and while I don't dislike the movie, I never really understood the praises heaped upon it. The atmosphere is creepy, the song-and-dance numbers interesting to say the least, and the naked tombstone straddling intriguing. But in the end, it's a thin story padded with '70s-era quirks, capped by an admittedly bravura finale. So the idea of a remake, written and directed by talented filmmaker Neil LaBute (I love every one of his films except "Possession"), didn't exactly strike my as heresy. I was actually looking forward to seeing what LaBute would do with the story in the 21st century.

What I was not expecting, however, was THIS, one of the worst films I have seen this year and a travesty to anyone who found the original even remotely interesting. The central plot remains mostly unchanged: Nicolas Cage plays a cop who goes looking for a missing girl on a remote island (this time off the coast of Washington) whose inhabitants are odd to say the least. The original's religious fanatics have been replaced by a female-driven society whose ancestors sought refuge in the 1800s to escape male rule and persecution. There are a few men here and there, all silent, kept around for procreation purposes. Instead of Christopher Lee, the leader here is played by Ellen Burstyn as a sort of earthly representative of Mother Nature.

I have to say that I really liked the whole male-female dichotomy going on here. It was a brave move on LaBute's part (and probably wise to stay away from the whole religious aspect in this day and age), but I think the risk paid off, resulting in a societal view rarely seen, thus making the movie more interesting.

So Cage goes looking for clues, finding even more mystery and questions around every new corner. And just as the cop's mind slowly begins to unravel, so does the film itself.

LaBute actually does a teriffic job of establishing an eeire and unsettling atmosphere in the film's early scenes on the island. There's something obviously off about the inhabitants, with their Amish-like garb and distrust of outsiders, but their behavior is never overly crazy. It's just damn creepy, and LaBute nails it. It really gave me high expectations for the rest of the film.

Unfortunately, the film is about Cage, and his character is right out of Script Writing 101. As the movie opens, his cop is unable to save a mother and daughter from a horrible accident. So he's got the whole troubled past thing going on. And he's taking pills, which means we're supposed to constantly question whether or not the guy is indeed crazy. The lame dream sequences and black-and-white crash flashbacks don't help matters, either, considering they take up about a quarter of the film's running time.

And that's the big problem here: LaBute has replaced '70s-era kitsch with tired and worn-out cliches. The script even throws in a soap opera subplot invovling paternity issues. It's all very routine and very annoying.

So I sat in my theater seat, twidddling my thumbs, anxiously waiting to see what LaBute had up his sleeve for the ending. Would he wuss out and change the original's jaw-dropper of a conclusion?

I should've gotten the hint that something was wrong right at the start of the last reel, when the movie suddenly abandons its modern dress and turns into what looks like a film literally made in the 70s. The tone shift is so jarring that instead of inducing fear it merely illicits giggles.

And then the ending. I am not going to reveal the remake's ending here. But let me say this: The last two minutes of this film are the worst two minutes I have seen of any film this year, quite possibly this century. What LaBute does is absolutely, positively infuriating to anyone who has seen the original. He just bends it over and rapes it while screaming out, "Who's your daddy?!" Apparently, modernizing a film means adding an insulting semi-twist ending that nearly negates everything you've seen before it. It doesn't even make sense when you really stop and think about it as the theater lights come up. And if you want to get really technical, this film puts the entire feminist movement one giant step back.

But I digress. The acting here ranges from good (Nicolas Cage) to fantastic (Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker, Leelee Sobieski) to awful (Kate Beehan, the young girl's mother). The same can be said of LaBute's direction, which is at times inspired, other times adequate. The score by Angelo Badalamenti is terrific, as always.

I know I wouldn't have hated this film as much as I did if it wasn't for the that final scene, and I wouldn't have hated that final scene as much if I had never seen the original. So if you're going into the movie fresh, you'll probably be merely disappointed. The rest of us will just have to weep at what LaBute has done to our collective memory of the original "Wicker Man." Thanks a lot, dude.

If you use this, you can call me Gandhiboy (You had previously posted a review of "RV" from me in April)