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NicFlix : The Wicker Man

To start off this article/review/rant I have some good news, and I have some bad news. Good news? After a long absence Nicflix is back! Bad news? I am the one who has to watch “The Wicker Man” and write this damn thing.

In September 2015 I had this brilliant idea that I would make fun of ridiculously bad Nic Cage movies available on Netflix. A great idea in theory until you actually sit down to watch “Left Behind”. That movie was so torturous my cousin and I made a fantasy football bet with the loser having to write the follow up. Fortunately, I won and was spared from watching “Outcast”. By December Nicflix was a dead idea… Until now when we made the same bet this season of fantasy football and I unfortunately loss. Now I am watching “Wicker Man” and hating my life and my cousin and I want to hurt him and watch him die a slow, painful death then pee on his ashes which I will then throw into a toilet filled with fecal matter and then…

Sorry… Too far? Ugh guess I have to swallow my pride and do this so here we go…

“The Wicker Man”. A true cinematic masterpiece that has a very fresh 90% on Rotten Tomatoes… Wait sorry that would be the 1973 original. This 2006 remake has a 15%… That is still considered fresh right?

Anyways… Without further ado my unedited notes I typed while watching this turd:

The movie begins in a diner. After poorly delivered dialogue between the waitress and a police officer we are shown that Nic Cage is also there and is also a cop. He then drives around on his motorcycle giving tickets and other mundane things a small town cop might do. A car has a baby doll strapped to the top of it along with a whole lot more junk. The doll falls off but Nic Cage scoops it up and then pulls the car over… The little girl whose doll it is is a real bitch and throws the doll back onto the street. Cage laughs it off, gets it and then a Mack Truck from out of nowhere hits the car head on, the car explodes into flames and Officer Cage goes for the rescue but EVERYBODY DIES AND THE MOVIE IS OVER… Right?

Nope.

Shit.

Now he is a changed man taking time away from work… A female cop comes to visit to check in on him. No bodies were found from the accident, and car was not registered to anybody…

Now he is reading a letter from some woman from his past asking for help to find a little girl named Rowan. The letter is the most perfectly hand written letter that would never exist in real life. He then answers the ringing phone but nobody was on the other line…

Back at the police station he brings the letter to his friend and we find out he was engaged to this girl! The missing girl is from a farming island… Is that a thing?

Officer Cage gets on a boat and heads out with the letter and photo of the little girl. Story is moving along fast but not fast enough. He keeps having flashbacks of the accident and keeps popping pills to try to cope.

Cage is trying to get a ride on a plane from this old guy who is a real bitch… He denies his request saying the island is private and they respect privacy! Nothing a little moolah cannot fix though… So he gets a flight to this farming island which looks like any old wooden island with no life on it.

Now all of a sudden there are people behind him and comes across a little community. Everybody is dressed sort of old school and conservative. He is not warmly greeted by the locals who say he needs permission to be there. They deny knowing the little girl… They do know the mother though- “Sister Willow”. There are guys holding a bag with a moving thing and the bag is dripping blood. Cage gets freaked out and the locals laugh. As he walks away to the “welcome house” one of the local woman say “that is not her daughter though”.

Every woman is called “Sister”. He has a drink of Meade and then makes an awkward announcement to everybody there that he is there on “official police business”. He then traps a bee under a mug and everybody looks on horrified. He sees his old fiancé though which is the only woman who looks young and feminine. She slips him a note after he secures a room for the night from the “bar maid”- what he actually calls her.

The note says she is being watched, do not trust anybody and have a secret meeting with me later. The meeting happens in broad day light? Ok… He questions what happened to them, to her, to this odd island… I tuned out during a lot of this scene. She says she only trusts Cage, she still wears their engagement ring around her neck… Fucking creepy and weird.

He is unpacking in his room and we see he has a “bee-epi”… What it is actually labeled so we are all clear that he is allergic to bees. He watches the ladies doing a weird ritualistic thing about “the return of the Wicker Man”. He notices somebody went through his things and took tapes called “Everything Is Ok”… Perhaps the most generic name for a motivational tape that has never existed. He questions a young woman about it but she denies anything.

He then wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a little girl running around outside through his window so he goes to investigate. Obviously another hallucination or something… This leads to him finding a barn. Inside the barn he goes to the upper level but falls through the floor unfortunately saving himself before he falls all the way to the ground.

So far this movie is throwing a whole lot of random plot points at you and none of it really makes any sense… Maybe it will at the end?

He is eating breakfast and asks the same young woman from last night about the syrup- why is it store bought? He then asks her about the “Sister” label. He notices a bunch of pictures of little girls taken from a festival he asks the bar maid about them… They are from the annual Harvest Festival. One of the frames is broken though and the picture is missing. He then finds the young woman again outside and asks her questions… The young woman wants Cage to take her with him when he leaves the island.

Holy crap I am only through 34 minutes of this movie and this is how much has happened… Yet at the same time nothing at all has happened!

Walking through the woods Cage sees a bunch of pregnant women walking together. He goes to the school… Everybody is dressed like a pilgrim or Amish. All the children are girls… Have not seen one boy. Only males shown on the island were the first two locals with the bag.

Officer Cage finds a school, takes over the classroom and ruins the lesson asking the girls about the photo of Rowan. They all deny knowing her. He notices an empty desk, he opens it up and a crow flies out. A little girl says “we trapped the bird inside to see how long it would last”. METAL!!!!!!

He asks for the attendance records and he steals it from the teacher and notices Rowan on the list but crossed out. He freaks out only like Nic Cage can and then the teacher talks to him in private.

The teacher says Rowan “does not exist” aka died in an accident. AWESOME NOW THIS MOVIE CAN END! Right?

Nope.

Shit.

Ends up she burned to death… Just like the shitty little girl in the car accident!

He continues walking and finds a grave. Her mother shows up and says that is not her grave. UGH ONE MORE HOUR OF THIS CRAP!

Nic Cage finds out he is the father of Rowan… But of course he is…

He checks out her room, and continues the investigation. He decides he needs to go back to the plane and use its radio. The plane is parked and Nic Cage sits on the dock waiting for the pilot to come back. He hears a noise and sees a body trapped under the dock. It is a little girl, he jumps into the water yelling “Rowan!” and then… PSYCHE! It is just a hallucination. He pops more pills… Yummy! He then does what he should have done a long time ago and swims out to the plane but of course the radio has been destroyed.

He goes to interview the woman who takes the photos of the girls at the Harvest Festival. She has a book called “Rituals of the Ancients”. He asks her for a copy of last years photo since it was missing. She says she will get a copy to him and he leaves. He hides in the bushes until two hooded women come for her and she leaves. He breaks into her house and snoops around at all the weird shit in her house like jarred fetuses… Yummy!

He finds the photo of Rowan from Harvest Festival and goes to question the mother. There is a note on the photo saying “worst Harvest on record”. He is upset and is freaking out that she never told him about their daughter being a part of the rituals… I mean he is already protective of his daughter he had no clue existed until minutes ago and why is he upset anyways? I mean I thought we were already supposed to know all of this stuff? So then they naturally start making out.

He comes across a man doing manual labor… He is unable to speak. A couple other men are shown doing manual labor. Obviously all men on this island are there to reproduce, do manual labor and are unable to talk.

Nic Cage is riding around on a bike he got from somewhere and comes across a bunch of bees that are now attacking him AND HE DIES AND THE MOVIE ENDS! Right?

Nope.

Shit.

He passes out and wakes up with the photographer woman looking over him because she is also a physician. Cage is alive and well. Bummer.

He then goes outside to meet the boss lady… I already forget her name but she runs this place. Beekeepers saved him. Beekeepers are all over the island though.

He asks permission to dig up her body and do an autopsy… All police officers have that skill set right? She fills him in on the history of the island and their treatment of men… Basically what I said already. He also gets permission to dig up the body and is given a bike to ride away on.

Around this time in the movie I realized my remote control was missing and it took me the next 10 minutes to find it… It was the best 10 minutes of the movie as I did not watch them.

Only 30 more minutes to go…

When I started watching the movie again Cage for some reason was trapped in a pool of water and screaming “HELP!” I guessed I missed something but I am sure nothing important…

The mother of course finds him and gets him out. They are in an underground cellar/dungeon/thing and he found the red sweater that Rowan was wearing when she went missing. He also found a burnt doll I am guessing from the grave.

He goes back to the boss lady house. Her name is Summer Isle? Also the name of the island… I think… I should know these things. She ignores his screams for her though.

He rides his bike back to the “welcome house” and all the men are there. He tries to rally them for help but none of them answer. He grabs his bad ass bike and hits the open road.

He comes across the teacher again who is wearing a bird mask. She says they are preparing for a celebration- a death and a rebirth.

Nic Cage then rides around the island kicking in doors and yelling at children to take off their masks so he can see their faces. This part was unintentionally hilarious. He makes his way to the water… The plane has sunk and the pilot is dead on the beach with his eyes and mouth sewn up. METAL!

He goes back to the “welcome house” and knocks out the bar maid. He then fights the young woman. Officer Cage beating bitches like he is Chris Brown or something. Meanwhile everybody else is at the ritual. This movie is stupid.

Nic Cage somehow gets a full bear costume and joins the ritual… What the hell am I watching?

HAHAHAHA he sees Rowan is going to be sacrificed… Nic Cage in a bear outfit approaches her, knocks out one of the “Sisters” and grabs the girl. Despite everybody else being there he manages to escape with Rowan in hand… And yes while still wearing his bear costume.

Rowan runs back to everybody though. Officer Cage is quickly surrounded by the community and it turns out it was a trap so he can be sacrificed. The whole thing was a trap. HAHAHA this movie is stupid.

His ex-fiancé (whose name I just remembered is Willow), is the daughter of the boss lady Summer Isle. She was in on the whole thing. The whole community attack him, pin him down and first thing they do is break his legs. Then they put on a mask with a funnel and Nick Cage is hilariously attacked by a bunch of CGI bees that are poured through the funnel.

But then they inject him with his epi pen so he is kept alive… What was the freaking point of any of that then?

He then is carried away and finally meets The Wicker Man! Literally a giant man shaped structure made of wicker. They raise him up so he is in the middle of the structure and placed in a cage. The Wicker Man is then lit on fire by that little bitch Rowan AND HE DIES AND THE MOVIE ENDS! Right?

YES!

YES!

YES!

The movie was way too long but so is this article so not going to count that as a strike against it. The movie is stupid but in an entertaining way. Some movies are so bad they are just bad (Like “Left Behind”). Others are so bad they are good., like the classic “Face/Off”. “The Wicker Man” is so bad it is ok… I was entertained throughout even if not entirely in the way the movie was intended to entertain me.

Also when the credits begin it says “For Johnny Ramone”. Worst. Tribute. Ever.

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