The Wicker Man (2006)

"Oh, no! Not the bees! Not the bees!", 9 February 2008

What a freakin' joke! The 1973 version of The Wicker Man is a true classic and one of the most powerful movies I've ever seen. The final scenes have lost nothing and remain as strong today as they were over 30 years ago. The 2006 version of The Wicker Man manages to take most everything that made the original such a wonderfully compelling piece of cinema and chuck it out the window. How you can take out the religious and sexual aspects that were a focus of the original story and still call it The Wicker Man? And what do you use to replace the religious and sexual aspects so key to understanding the central character? Bees! Yes, that's right – bees, for God's sake! What an insult! There's a story that the original negatives of the 1973 film were buried in a landfill under a roadway in England. Why couldn't it have been the 2006 abomination?

2/10