Most movie watchers are accustomed to horror films where the horror arises strictly from situations the characters encounter through plot development. In that regard, 1973’s The Wicker Man is a different breed of horror film entirely. The story unfolds more like a slow burn thriller (with the occasional odd musical interlude) than it does anything resembling your typical scary movie. In fact, until The Big Reveal of the last 10-15 minutes, it’s tough to even consider it a horror film. The movie is much more concerned with the ideas and causes behind what is taking place than it is with strictly what is taking place. It ends up being a picture that’s less visceral and more intellectual – one that’s scarier when you sit down and think about it.
The film’s plot is rather simple: Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) comes to the island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. Howie is met with indifference and resistance when he starts his investigation. As the investigation moves along, Howie soon realizes he’s being told lies and suspects a town-wide cover up of the girl’s death. While the story deals solely with Howie’s investigation, that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what the movie is really about.
The key to the movie is the contrast between Howie’s devout Christianity and the inhabitants of Summerisle’s devout Paganism. It’s all tied into the narrative about the missing girl, but there’s no mistaking by the end of the film that the religious aspect is what’s been more important throughout. Howie sees the islanders as heathens, and they see him as a fool. Neither accepts the other as anything more than a weirdo or outsider, and that’s where the film’s main source of conflict arises. Both Howie and the people of Summerisle see the world through their separate religious perspectives. There’s no way they’re ever going to understand one another or learn to coexist because they’re unable to comprehend why someone would be different in the first place. These people are all living as if their one way is the only possible way.
There’s a sequence in the middle of the film where our “hero” visits the island’s local schoolhouse that goes a long way to explaining exactly what this film is about. After chastising the teacher’s methods as “corrupting the young” (because, you know, since he’s a Christian police officer, he’s an authority on these things), Howie shows the students (all girls) a picture of the missing girl, and asks if they know who she is. They claim they don’t, but Howie notices an empty desk and asks whose it is. When he takes a look at the desk, he opens it up and sees a beetle walking around a nail that it’s tied to with a piece of string. The creepy young girl looks at him and says, “The little old beetle goes 'round and 'round. Always the same way, y'see, until it ends up right up tight to the nail. Poor old thing!” It’s a wonderful visualization of the movie’s theme – that people who blindly follow anything (in this case religion) are ultimately controlled by that thing, and end up “right up tight to the nail”. In addition to showing how the theme applies to Howie, just before the schoolhouse scene begins, the sergeant is watching the school’s male students parade around a wooden pole while holding long streamers attached to the pole. It’s a visual parallel to the beetle going around the nail used to condemn the townspeople’s way of life just as much as Howie’s. These sorts of subtle visual metaphors are all over the film (the ending visually echoes Christ’s walk to the cross), and I imagine rewatching the movie would be rewarding.
It should be noted that The Wicker Man has a number of flaws. For all the inspired moments of visual metaphor, there are far too many moments of dullness. At times, the way certain information is relayed to the viewer is uninvolving. For instance, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) and Howie have a long talk about Paganism that ends up being a clumsy way to communicate his back-story and his religion to the audience. There’s another instance where Howie is reading a book on Paganism in the library where, via voiceover, the contents of the book are relayed to the audience. Again, that’s a sloppy and uninteresting way of giving the audience information.
There’s also the problem with the way the main character is presented. Howie functions as something of a surrogate for the audience. We’re invited to see things the way he does since he’s the typical “hero” of these kinds of movies. I imagine this was a more successful tactic in 1973 than in 2012, as being open minded about religion has become a bit more typical. Plus, the fact that Howie is an uptight jerk makes him a difficult character to relate to unless you’re also an uptight jerk. This misstep ends up being the film’s most significant fault. The ending, where it’s revealed that the townspeople have orchestrated the entire missing girl case as a test of Howie’s faith (they need his pure faith to make a successful sacrifice to their Pagan gods), would have been incredibly affecting if the movie had spent time making us root for Howie. Instead, we get a really smart, clever condemnation of everyone, but one that is emotionally hollow. You get the sense that Howie gets what he deserves rather than the complete shock that would result from identifying with him. I’m not necessarily against an unlikable protagonist, but the lack of identification with literally everyone in the film, made this a hard one for me to care about. As stated earlier, it’s more of an intellectual exercise than anything else. However, the movie successfully makes its point, which is something that’s always appreciated.
The Wicker Man was a movie that initially left me feeling a bit indifferent, but the more I contemplated the ideas of the film, the more I appreciated what it is trying to do and how smart it really is. I can’t give it an unconditional recommendation, but it’s definitely a movie I can see getting better with repeated viewings. It’s much more invested in its visuals than its story (especially at the end; I can’t stress enough how smart it is), which is something to be appreciated for a horror film. There just isn’t enough feeling in it for me to agree with the film’s exquisite reputation.
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