MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Maz Murdoch (asda-man) You might've heard of a film called The Wicker Man? I've not seen the Nicolas Cage version, but I know it's legendary for being bloody awful. No, I'm talking about the original film from Robin Hardy which featured Edward Woodward becoming embroiled in an increasingly disturbing mystery accumulating to one of the greatest endings in movie history. After a thirty year absence from the big screen, Robin Hardy himself decided to film a sequel called The Wicker Tree. We're allowed to get excited because it's the original director coming back to do it all with a cameo from Lord Summerisle himself! I remember watching the trailer when it came out and thinking that it looked really promising with its surreal, unsettling imagery. The trailer didn't reveal anything about the plot, and after seeing the film I can see why.The Wicker Tree is complete shitake mushrooms. I'm not quite sure what Robin Hardy has been doing for three decades, but he must have been going through some sort of hideous artistic crisis. Maybe he's become a drug addict because he must've been smoking something unsavoury when he was behind the camera for this. The film follows a couple of young, Bible bashing Americans going on a pilgrimage to Scotland to spread the word of God. Just in case you're not sure whether they're American or not from their strong Texan accents, they're complete with cowboy hats and have to sing a country song every five minutes. Our virginal hero, Beth Booby, is even a famous country singer despite having a fairly crap voice.Beth Booby is like the anti-Miley Cyrus which is revealed in a hilarious sequence where Beth and her bo watch themselves on Scottish news performing like Katherine Jenkins in a Church. The news reporter then shows us what Beth Booby used to be like by popping on the world's worst music video featuring Beth line dancing in tiny shorts singing about how much of a harlet she is. All that's missing is her straddling a wrecking ball and licking a sledge hammer. It's an absolutely hilarious moment, just because it's so badly done. It sets the tone for the rest of the film. Her bo is a born again virgin just like his fiancé, although he still finds time skinny dipping and having sex with strangers in lakes.The original Wicker Man became a cult classic after being re-discovered by some small cinemas in 1977. The same is likely to happen to The Wicker Tree, although this will of course reach cult status for all the wrong reasons. The film itself looks like some sort of shoddy Drama for ITV and the acting from the entire cast is even worse. I read somewhere that Joan Collins was going to star in it at one point and that really would've just been the cherry on top of the cake! Some of the cast actually look like they've just been dragged off their local Scottish street and forced to star in the film. My heart broke a little when the great Christopher Lee appeared for a pointless cameo, acting opposite a hopelessly wooden lad painting a bridge.The attempts at intentional comedy are cringe-inducing and completely out of place. The film works much better when it's not trying to be funny. It definitely falls under the 'so bad it's good' category and is brilliantly entertaining all the way through. I must say that the attempts of Wicker Man-esque horror in the last 15 minutes got a bit tedious, because it felt like they were trying to actually generate scares. The rest of the film is a hoot though, for all the wrong reasons. It's as if some kids saw The Wicker Man, got hammered and decided to do a remake. It's extraordinary that it's the total opposite and Robin Hardy himself created this masterpiece of disaster. If I were to rate this film on quality, it would struggle to receive a 2/10, however as it's such a blast to laugh at I have to go higher.

Theo Robertson I have never believed for a second that the 1973 film THE WICKER MAN is any type of cinematic masterpiece as some defenders claim . It suffers from a painfully ridiculous plot hole in its central premise . That said at least it has a plot . This 2011 " spiritual sequel " ( Whatever that can be defined as ) to the 1973 original doesn't have a plot " You sure Theo ? I mean it seems stupid making a film and filling it with nothing happening " Well who said anything has to happen in a film ? Well things do happen but they rarely make any sense . Let's also be brutally realistic and point out that films are simply made to make a profit for the company producing it and if Robin Hardy director of the original film says " Hey guys I've just made a sequel to my 1973 masterwork and Christopher Lee returns in it " you can guarantee some naïve fans are going to rush to the cinema to watch it only to realise their mistake after they've paid their money at the box office What makes this film a fairly dreadful experience is the tone . A young Christian couple travel to Scotland to spread the word of the Lord . See what happens when you listen to Pat Robertson ? So they arrive in Scotland and find that when people have sex subtitles suddenly appear out of nowhere as do pagans and cannibals and jokes that fall as flat as a pancake . If you think a Scotsman in a kilt having his genitals damaged is the strong foundation of a running joke you might find this film amusing in some small way . I didn't The visuals are also ill though out . Most of the look of the film resembles one of this television productions that ITV broadcast that again jars with the tone of what happens , much of which is crass and unpleasant . None of this is helped by the cast , many of who give the impression they're all appearing in entirely separate films . The worst performance comes from the delightfully named Britannia Nicol who is supposed to carry but would have difficulty in carrying a cup of coffee in to my living room . It's no surprise that she was never seen after this film . In fact neither was this film seen again after it made its limited release to the cinemas

MBunge The worst thing about The Wicker Tree is that it's not even the worst attempt at exploiting the original horror classic. The remake of The Wicker Man starring Nicholas Cage is at least so awesomely point-and-laugh terrible that you can enjoy mocking it. This thing is merely another lame horror flick to throw on the ever-growing pile. Robin Hardy turns in a thoroughly pedestrian job as a director but came up with a stupid, shallow and simplistic script that works best as an unintentional love letter to Anthony Shaffer, writer of the first film. I hate to put it this way but The Wicker Tree looks, sounds and feels like the work of an old man who is well past his creative prime and no one had the decency to tell him. If this move had failed spectacularly, you could credit Hardy with perhaps trying to be bold and imaginative. As it is, it's hard to view this as anything more that a much delayed cash grab.Beth Boothby (Brittania Nicol) is a Christian country singer who, along with her cowboy fiancée Steve (Henry Garrett), travels from Texas to Scotland as a missionary to revive the faith of a small village. Let me stop right here and point something out because I think it gets at the heart of what's wrong with this film. Hardy was bright enough to realize that England has become such a religiously neutered society that he would have to go far afield to find representatives of Christianity to square off against the forces of paganism. However, he didn't bother to think about how that kind of cultural shift would affect anything else. Paganism in a post-Christian 21st century should not be at all the same thing as during the 1970s when church-going was still part of the established order of life in the UK.Let me draw an analogy. Organized crime still exists in America but is, by all accounts, a shell of what is once was. If you made a movie about the Mafia today which didn't acknowledge that reality, that portrayed the Mob as the same sort of pervasive and powerful force it was in the 70s or during Prohibition, you'd end up with a silly and contrived bit of nonsense. Tony Soprano could not be Michael Corleone. Yet, other than bringing in Yanks as his designated Christian victims, Hardy didn't put any thought at all into how the passing of time and cultural and economic changes would require re-imagining the Wicker Man story.The whole of The Wicker Tree is a constant reminder that Hardy didn't think things through when he wrote this screenplay. I mean, the original was set on an island that was physically cut off from civilization. That's the sort of detail that helps the viewer suspend disbelief and accept a pagan cult surviving in secrecy. The Wicker Tree not only takes place on the mainland, it's set in a village near a nuclear power plant. There's nothing isolated or secluded about such a location that would make avoiding public scrutiny easy. And while the original Wicker Man left open the question of what happens after the human sacrifice of a police officer and even hints that things aren't going to turn out well for the murderous cult, this flick ends with an epilogue that expects us to believe that not only can a minor celebrity vanish from a Scottish village with no one caring but that the gruesome death of the founder and leader of the cult would have absolutely no effect on anything. Oh, and it expects you to believe that a human being exposed to flame burns like gas-soaked tissue paper.Anyway, Beth and Steve arrive in Scotland. The pagan villagers want to kill them. They do. The end. Believe me, I put as much thought into those four sentences and Hardy did with this script.Topping it all is that while the original seemed like its pagan cult was at least based on some real and coherent religion, The evil faith in The Wicker Tree appears to be nothing more than horror movie tripe that Hardy just pulled out of his butt. I'm no expert and maybe it is drawn from historical truth, but it's presented so poorly and idiotically that it comes off like made up crap.Now, Honeysuckle Weeks does take her top off and there a good bit of nudity at the end but it is mostly of the real world nudist variety where you kind of wish the folks had kept their clothes on. There isn't anything that's even inadvertently worth seeing here. Watch the original. Watch the remake and turn its awfulness into a drinking game with your friends. Don't waste your time on The Wicker Tree.

Paul-b-1 Associating yourself with a successful previous film is always a double-edged sword, as the guaranteed audience from the first film are liable to be more critical if the subsequent movie is short of the mark.What can I say about this movie? The original "Wicker Man" was like a finely crafted sculpture, while the "Wicker Tree" by comparison is more of a turd on a stick. OK, perhaps that is a bit harsh, and I did find the movie reasonably entertaining, but there is something of a gulf in quality between these two films.The Plot In essence – two "born again" young people (one former pop singer and a reformed gambler) leave the American "God Belt" to convert the inhabitants of Scotland. No luck in the cities, so they go to the country where a local community (who seem to have a dearth of children) take them to their hearts before killing them as a part of a May day ritual.The issues Firstly, the setting. Yes, I could see a remote rural island community being seduced into Pagan ritualism, but this is set on "the border between Scotland and England", i.e. mainland Britain. In fact much of the filming took place not that far from Edinburgh, a major city.Secondly, the motivation. In the original, an isolated rural island community turned to human sacrifice when its sole source of income, fruit and veg, failed disastrously. In the sequel, however, the boss of the local nuclear power plant is aware that his facility is leaking deadly radioactive material into the water table which has rendered the local population sterile. OK, if you live in a small community next to a nuclear power station and suddenly nobody can have children, surely your first suspicion would be the plant itself – you wouldn't let the plant owner convince you that the dramatic rise in childlessness was as a result of displeasing pagan deities. I mean, it's not like nuclear power doesn't already have a reputation..Thirdly, the method. I am aware that a number of Wiccan followers were a bit concerned about the misrepresentation of their religion in the original film, but at least it all looked plausible to the viewer. Sadly, in the Wicker Tree the "pagan rituals" portrayed all seemed completely wacky. Did pagans really turn the may Queen into a human waxwork? Did they really chase someone around, catch them, rip them apart with their bare hands and eat them? Even if it were true it would still seem preposterous.Fourthly, the victims. When Edward Woodward's character flew over to the island to locate a missing girl, the audience was shocked when his good intentions were betrayed and he ended up sacrificed. In this film, however, the victims are annoying "God-bothering" Americans and it is a blessing to all when they end up slain.Fifthly, the loose ends. Why build a wicker tree? Why try to butcher an animal using a table circular saw? Why petrify the May Queen? There were only about five or six pickled May Queens on display, so this practise hadn't been going on for long, yet it clearly wasn't working – why continue? Why hadn't the childlessness of the village been spotted by the local Health Authority, bringing down a wave of investigations on the nearby nuclear plant? What was the point of Christopher Lee's bit, other than to tie in to the old film? Even then he wasn't referred to as "Lord Summerisle"..In conclusion, I actually quite like the movie for its silliness, but don't for one moment think that you will be getting another "Wicker Man"..