The Wicker Man

A California cop (Nicolas Cage), recovering from a traumatic road accident, is summoned by a former lover to help find her daughter, who has mysteriously disappeared from the rustic island commune where mother and daughter live. Writer-director Neil LaBute’s remake of the 1973 British cult film (originally written by Anthony Shaffer) moves the action from Scotland to Washington state and changes the gender of the antagonist; the “Lord Summersisle” of the original (played by Christopher Lee) becomes “Sister Summersisle” (Ellen Burstyn), almost literally the queen bee of the colony. The changes in the script invoke a kind of prim terror of women that only LaBute seems to feel, and Shaffer’s story becomes a crack-brained castration fantasy. Cage gives the silly goings-on his customary intense conviction.