The Wicker Man

This inadvertently hilarious trainwreck of a faux horror film not only looks and feels like one of those cheesy made-for-television potboilers from the ’70s, but also plays like a cinematic Rorschach test for both director Neil LaBute and his hangdog lead Nicolas Cage. Inexplicably substituting the Christian-ethos-confronted-with-old-world-rituals of the source material with shrill-voiced agitprop of a gender war of attrition, this load of bollocks would be offensive if it weren’t so endearingly harebrained. Add to the mix a resolution that, when explained, completely negates everything that preceeded it, gratuitous and repeated flashbacks that serve no other purpose than padding the running time and a superfluous coda, and we have an early winner for worst movie of the year. And it’s been a bad year for movies.