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The Wicker Man (1973) did not disappoint. That was, forgiving some recency bias, a top 10 horror film for me. October's starting out strong!

This thread is my initial thoughts and also a bit of a comparison to The Wicker Man remake with Nicolas Cage. https://twitter.com/filmobjective/status/1311877370492719106

So yeah, I did watch the remake of Wicker Man first. Turns out it made zero difference, which is a testament to the remakeSwitching the conflict from Christianity v Paganism to Male v Female was a TERRIBLE idea. There are no clear core values in that conflict at all!

The original really boils down to Chastity v Instinct. If it’s Male v Female, it’s social, not philosophical. The idea of female overlords enslaving pathetic men makes women seem like lascivious monsters and men like weak-willed victims. It's medieval in a bad way.

But the main problem is actually that in the remake, the town is creepy and horrific from MINUTE ONE. It’s immediately a horror film. The greatness of the original starts w/ a town that seems standoffish but normal, rural, traditional. Unraveling it is what results in horror.

It does so in a way that seems INHERENT to that kind of normalcy, down to the brilliant reuse of the folk melodies.

It even shows how naturally problematic it is for society to worship EITHER gender. There's penis/uterus obsession imagery here that could be an essay on its own.

The detail is where it shines, like jumping through fire to bless a fetus or using frogs to cure colds. They display beliefs in even non-horror ways; just demonstrations of how another spiritual worldview changes EVERYTHING, down to everyday beliefs in another form of the world.

The movie feels LIVING, not just a horror movie setup.

When movies redo this idea, it becomes more of a hostage film w/ less specific core values (Midsommer). Wicker Man ’73 isn’t one. In the end, the protagonist has to do everything willingly. He must partake in their everyday.

So it plays out as a chess game where Instinct predicts how Chastity will respond to temptation, w/o forcing him to do anything.

This clarity weaponizes that sunshine. It also comes w/ a LACK of judgment, which it doesn’t need because of how mechanically sound its script is.

It simply presents two worldviews and creates a plausible way that they would fail to co-exist in a situation that fully demonstrates their limitations using extremes. It doesn't fully support or condemn either.

The burning is a clear demonstration of an inevitable end:

Chastity could never willingly give in except in sacrifice and Instinct’s drive was always to destroy it.

Note: I’m not a huge fan of the “I will now explain the whole plan to you” method of ending a film and I think any track on the score w/ an electric guitar is BADLY dated.

But the cinematography is gorgeously naturalistic, the editing never stops increasing tension, and the casting is one of those across-the-board successes. The Wicker Man is unnerving folk horror at its absolute best. I'll be thinking and writing about it for a long time.

Or at least, I WILL be thinking about it. Just as soon as I figure out the answer to the most important question of all ...