2K Replay: THE WICKER MAN (2006)

 by Adam Riske

Nominated for “Worst Picture” at the Razzie Awards. It lost to Basic Instinct 2.

• Best Scene/Moment: Really the entire third act where Nicolas Cage starts losing his shit at everyone gaslighting him for the first hour-plus of the movie.

• Best Song: I guess the score by Angelo Badalamenti since there’s no songs, really, unlike the original movie, which has a lot of catchy folk tunes.

• Best Merch: A “Director Neil LaBute 2006 The Wicker Man…Script Cover Leather” for only $649.99. That’s about $10 out of my price range. It’s really nice looking, I’ll give it that. Probably smells good too. Like leather. I think leather smells good. Stop looking at me like that. I don’t really care that it says The Wicker Man or Neil LaBute on it. I just think it’s a nice leather script cover.

• Director Grade: The Wicker Man (2006) was directed by Neil LaBute.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: In the Company of Men, The Wicker Man (2006), House of Darkness
OK Movies: Lakeview Terrace
Bad Movies: Nurse Betty, Death at a Funeral
Unseen By Me: Your Friends and Neighbors, Possession (2002), The Shape of Things, Some Velvet Morning, Dirty Weekend, Out of the Blue, Fear the Night
Overall Grade: B-

• Double It with This 2006 Movie: The Omen (2006)

• Year 2006 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Black Christmas (2006), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), When a Stranger Calls (2006)

• Ella McCay or The Wicker Man (2006)? Probably The Wicker Man just slightly.

• Mall Movie? Borderline yes. Normally a Neil LaBute movie wouldn’t play at the mall, but this was dumped by Warner Bros. and feels pretty mall-friendly once you watch it.

• Only in 2006: Aaron Eckhart in a movie for two seconds as Truck Stop Patron. Obviously, it’s because he’s a frequent collaborator of LaBute and he’s doing him a solid. Honestly, Eckhart could have totally played the lead in this; not that I would prefer it to having Nicolas Cage as the protagonist.

• Scene Stealer (tie): Ellen Burstyn and Molly Parker.

• I Miss: Can I say Warner Bros. being its own studio?

• I Don’t Miss: DVDs of 2000s horror movies with multiple versions of the movie. So many of them seem to have both theatrical and unrated cuts. I can never tell which one to watch and feel like I’m missing something if I pick one over the other. For example, if I didn’t do internet sleuthing, I would’ve watched the theatrical cut of The Wicker Man (2006), which is far inferior to the unrated cut. The latter is the one I remember and if I didn’t research it beforehand, I would’ve been super confused why the ending I remembered didn’t show up in the movie I was watching.

• 2006 Crush: Molly Parker.

• 2026 Crush: Molly Parker.

• What I Thought in 2006: I remember not expecting much at the time (the movie kind of came and went in its initial release), but I ended up liking The Wicker Man (2006) more than I anticipated when I caught up to it on DVD. It was nuts and fun and the type of movie you want to tell your friends about.

• What I Think in 2026: I’m still a fan of this one. It’s not as good as the original of course (that would be hard to do since it’s one of the best horror movies of the '70s) but The Wicker Man (2006) does a really good job setting an eerie and bizarre tone. I genuinely think it’s well made and has a solid Nicolas Cage performance at the center. There’s a lot to laugh at, I suppose, if that’s what you want to get out of the movie. Neil LaBute seems to be very afraid of women and that biographical aspect makes the movie fascinating.