The Wicker Man (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Audio Commentary
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	97:32
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Neil LaBute
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Nicolas Cage Ellen Burstyn Kate Beahan Frances Conroy Molly Parker Leelee Sobieski Diane Delano Michael Wiseman Erika-Shaye Gair Christa Campbell Emily Holmes Zemphira Gosling Matthew Walker
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Angelo Badalamenti

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

    After witnessing a terrible road accident, police officer Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) is indefinitely placed on stress leave. While on leave, he receives a letter from his ex-fiancé, Willow (Kate Beahan), asking him for help locating her young daughter. Edward accepts the task and soon makes the trip to help out, but is still haunted by the accident that he witnessed.

    Willow now lives on a small island colony, among a cult of women who worship bees, are each named after a tree and treat men as mindless drones. Edward and Willow soon come to believe that Willow's daughter has been kidnapped by the other women in the cult and is to be used as a human sacrifice. Working against the clock, Edward frantically searches the village to uncover the madness that has led to the kidnapping and to find the girl.

    The original version of the The Wicker Man is a classic psychological thriller that played with occult and pagan mystery while contrasting the associated old-world lifestyle with the paranoia that the older generation of the day had about the hedonism and "free love" hippy ideals of the day. It was a masterpiece. This unnecessary remake isn't. In short, while gratuitously aping the original, it has sorely missed the point.

    Obviously, the concept was in need of a significant degree of updating to be taken seriously in a modern context, but this adaptation only proves that the concept was all too particular to the age the original was made. Even with some relatively clever updating (and a host of less clever updating), the concept errs more towards silly than creepy and dull rather than suspenseful. A stellar cast of supporting actresses (Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker, Frances Conroy, Leelee Sobieski) is squandered in inconsequential roles.

    Ultimately, there is really no reason to watch this version of The Wicker Man. There are far worse movies out there, but few that paint themselves into the following dilemma: If you have seen the original then this version will seem to have frustratingly missed the point of the affair, but if you haven't seen the original then this rather dull imitation is similar enough that it would ruin the effect of the original.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is a quite soft throughout, but consistently so. There are no issues with noticeable film grain or low level noise. There is a good amount of detail visible in darker scenes, but much of the film appears to be a little too bright and this results in many of the blacks appearing lighter than they should. Other than appearing too bright, the colours appear to be fairly accurate.

    There are a number of noticeable MPEG compression-related artefacts noticeable throughout the film. In particular, pixelation in backgrounds occasionally reaches a distracting level (eg. at 27:10). There are no film artefacts visible in the transfer.

    An English subtitle track and English for the Hearing Impaired subtitle track. Both appear accurate and well-timed, based on the portion I sampled.

    This is a single layer disc, so there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is one English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kbps) audio track.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand. It appears to be well synchronized throughout.

    The film features a score by cult favourite Angelo Badalamenti. Despite the recognisable name, there is little to really recommend it. It fits the feature well, but would be hard to tell apart from many another suspense thriller score. It is well mixed however.

    The surrounds are put to reasonable effect throughout the film, but nothing more than you would expect from a recent film. There is modest subwoofer usage, but rarely much call for support from the LFE channel either (other than to back up some nice flames towards the end of the film).

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The disc opens with the annoying anti-piracy trailer that many have come to loathe and a rather over-compressed trailer for Blu-ray (it looks so bad, you would almost think it was done deliberately to make us think how much better Blu-ray must be).

Audio Commentary with Director Neil LaBute, Editor Joel Plotch, Costume Designer Lynette Meyer and Stars Kate Beahan and Leelee Sobieski

    An excessively chatty and self congratulatory commentary that is dominated by Neil LaBute. Despite talking a great deal, none of the commentators have much to say or are cut off by LaBute when they try. This one is a waste of time and space.

Trailers

    Trailers for Casino Royale, The Covenant, The Pursuit of Happyness and Talledega Nights.

    The Region 1 edition comes as a dual-sided disc with the original "rated" version on one side and an "unrated" version on the other. The "unrated" version is the same version that is found on the Region 4 disc. By all accounts, the only difference is an additional scene at the end of the film. The special features on the discs are otherwise identical. Region 1 wins this round.

    An uncomfortably silly and rather dull remake of a true classic. If you are looking for a tale of creepy pagan-filled madness, check out the original The Wicker Man. Alas, this remake serves for little other than to spoil the original.

    The video transfer is fair, though not quite up to the standard you would likely expect of a recent release. The audio is fine. The sole extra is not worth the effort.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall