What makes it different from others?

Masterful Movie

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Blistering performances.

Having watched the original "The Wicker Man" and I'd read all the bad reviews for "The Wicker Tree" but I had to see it for myself. Massive spoilers below. After watching it, I thought that many of the reviewers missed it for what it really was - a much deeper movie than most realize. The underlying theme is religion - as neither the "born again" Christians nor the pagans come off in a positive light. Both Beth and Steve are portrayed as being extremely naive born again Christians - in their introductory scene at the Texas gospel church, their introducer's spiel makes it quite clear how little they all know about the pagans or Scotland for the matter as a nod to the innate provincialism of Christianity. (to say nothing of other religions as well!) Sir Lachlan's answer to Delia's question whether or not he really believed in their religion is a nod to Marx's well known quote "Religion is the opiate of the masses" - and it's true for both the pagans and the born-again Christians in the film. It's Sir Lachlan who dupes the pagans along to hide the fact that it's the nuclear plant that's responsible for the infertility all along. Sir Lachlan is just cynically leading along the townsfolk in believing that religion will be the answer to their ills - that is why there wasn't really much in way of outrage when Beth shoves him into the Wicker Tree and sets him on fire...deep down they all suspected his heart wasn't really into their beliefs. The film also plays on the hypocrisy that comes with religion on the part of both Beth's and Steve. They wear "promise rings" but the TV show scene of Beth's earlier musical career and her nearly succumbing to her old ways while watching it as well as Steve's cheating on Beth by having sex with Lolly aptly sums up the hypocrisy inherent in religion and the fact that religion is too artificial to contain human nature. The songs play a important part, particularly when the pagans change "There is Power in the Blood" into their horrifying chant when they corner Steve as the Wee Laddie in the castle and tear him apart and devour his flesh and blood as a nod to the maenads of ancient Greek myth. And it's also an allusion to how many pagan holidays have been converted to Christian ones. (Christmas, Halloween and Easter in particular) I think Hardy fully intended it to be a black satire on the nature of religion and I think he succeeded and it's a pretty relevant message in light of how modern religion and politics strive to demonize their opponents as being anything but a fellow human being which is exactly how Beth, Steven and the pagans perceive each other. Steve and Beth out of sheer naivete and ignorance while it's more of a thin veneer of civility by the pagans. To them, Beth and Steve are every bit the dumb animals like a goat or sheep that'd ordinarily be sacrificed. In which case the verse "the precious blood of the Lamb" takes on a very grim pagan undertone to it.

I have watched all of Foyle's War, and I have never seen Honeysuckle Weeks as I have here. Unlike Brittania Nicol who played Beth Boothby, she did not use a body double for her scenes.This was supposedly a remake of The Wicker Man and, while it was good, it certainly can't come up to the standards of either version, not the 1973 version with Edward Woodward, or the 2006 version with Nickolas Cage and Christa Campbell.There are a lot of sexual innuendos, as well as a very funny sex scene.Unfortunately, what is going to happen here is very obvious, and there is no element of surprise as there was in the previous films.

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.

Young Christians Beth and Steve, a gospel singer and her cowboy boyfriend, leave Texas to preach door-to-door in Scotland.When, after initial abuse, they are welcomed with joy and elation to Tressock, the border fiefdom of Sir Lachlan Morrison, they assume their hosts simply want to hear more about Jesus. How wrong they are.....The original Wicker man was full of menace and a strange feeling of dread throughout, much like Don't Look Now, and is still heralded today as one of the finest British horror movies ever made.Now we have this, which stamps all over the classic and almost ruins Hardys vision.It was so camp, so over the top, and filled with this really strange unfunny humour, that it was like a car crash, you didn't want to watch it, but you couldn't take your eyes off the screen.The two Americans were truly awful and typecast, and she gave the funniest line in the film, when she is praying and thanking the Lord for her good looks. She really had to look in the mirror.McTavish is good though, but not in it enough, and really make she film a little bit more affable when in it, hence the score of two.Lee pops up for a minute, in front of blue screen, looking angry, and that's really the only connection to the original.It really is a dog of a film, laughable in so many ways, but fans of the original, will just be angry.See the Cage remake, it's The Exorcist compared to this.