Nicolas Cage takes on a cult of honey-loving island women and gives us a performance so gloriously unhinged it transcends cinema itself.
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TL;DR: Part folk horror, part unintentional comedy, and 100% pure Nicolas Cage chaos—The Wicker Man may not be good, but it’s absolutely unforgettable. It’s a holy relic of Cage’s cinematic insanity and a must-see for anyone who worships at the altar of “so bad it’s brilliant.”
IN THIS CORNER: KELLY MINTZER
The Lowdown
It’s time to keep our appointment with the Wicker Man….
Any reasonable person would assume I hate The Wicker Man; any reasonable Kelly would hate The Wicker Man. But for better or worse, I am many things, and none of them are particularly reasonable.
I’ve been waiting somewhat patiently for The Wicker Man to come up in the Cage Match because, horrifyingly, I love this stupid fucking movie. I own a magnet of Nic Cage’s head trapped in the bee cage with the words “NOT THE BEES!” emblazoned on it. Everything about the movie is ludicrous and even offensive. But goddamn is it amazing.
The Wicker Man is a relatively loose adaptation of the original Christopher Lee film of the same name. I’m more than a little ashamed to admit that I saw the Nic Cage dumpster fire of a film first-they are truly worlds apart in quality.
The basic driving narrative thrust is the same; a police officer from the city (who honestly cares which one?) goes to a remote island to try to find a missing girl and is shocked by the pagan culture he encounters there. That is pretty much where the similarities end.
The Wicker Man 2006—a movie I saw in theaters when it was released and have since watched approximately 700 times—decides early and often to add some extra dashes of profound stupidity to the mix.
Officer Cage isn’t trying to find a random little girl; Rowan is likely his daughter! With Leelee Sobieski, his ex-fiance who is 20 years younger than him (don’t do the math, trust me. If one takes the year the movie was released into account, alongside how old Rowan is supposed to be, Leelee would have been, like, 12 when she was engaged to Nic Cage and birthing his baby).
But wait! There’s more!
The screenplay was written by Neil LaBute, a writer who I do believe has never met a woman he liked, and boy oh boy do you feel the stinking misogyny in every frame.
LaBute decides to make Summer Isle an entirely female society, so instead of the culture clash of Christianity and paganism in the original, it’s the clash of one brave weiner facing off against all these evil ovaries.
Do I think LaBute wrote this screenplay JUST so that a man can punch a woman in the face, and the audience is on his side? Meh. Maybe. Do I find it absolutely absurd that the movie expects me to be on Nicolas Cage’s side as he mans his way into a community he doesn’t belong in? Yeah. I do. I also feel like LaBute fundamentally misunderstands that the original was not on the side of the cop.
It’s a mess. It has an insanely stupid third-act twist that I couldn’t possibly say here because someone out there might still be waiting to experience the inspired idiocy of this absolute disaster of a movie. Nic Cage calls so many women bitches! At one point, he puts on a bear suit, and I laughed so hard and for so long… it is not intended as a joke.
And that, I think, is the enduring allure of this watery turd of a movie; it’s NOT intended as a joke, and that makes it so much funnier.
I really can’t think of one good thing about it. It’s pretty ugly looking, it’s nonsensical, it’s poorly paced, and it’s super misogynistic. But I can’t not recommend it.
The Cage Factor:
I think you’ve gotta see where I’m going with this. It is ESSENTIAL Cage, because it is such a quintessential Cage performance. Not an OUNCE of phoning it in, but also not a sensible choice is made. He’s so aggressively unsympathetic and unlikable that it’s difficult to know what he was even going for. But boy oh boy, it’s a big, dumb, watchable performance. This, my friends, is the reason the Cage Match exists. This is a Cage Fighter, all the way.
AND IN THIS CORNER: STEPHANIE MALONE
The Lowdown
Some films are misunderstood. Some are misguided. The Wicker Man (2006) is both… and that’s what makes it magnificent.
Neil LaBute’s remake of Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic takes one of the most sophisticated, haunting folk horror stories ever told and filters it through the fevered, wide-eyed lens of Nicolas Cage. The result is an unholy alchemy of horror, melodrama, and meme-worthy mania.
This is the kind of movie you don’t watch so much as you experience. It’s a ritual, a cinematic séance that starts with intrigue and ends with Cage in a bear suit committing acts of slapstick violence before being sacrificed to bees. It’s a movie that dares to ask: what if you remade a masterpiece, stripped it of subtlety, and let Nicolas Cage go feral inside it? The answer, of course, is glorious chaos.
On paper, The Wicker Man should have worked. Writer-director Neil LaBute was fresh off acclaimed, acerbic dramas like In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, known for his biting dissections of gender and morality. Translating that to horror—particularly a cult-based story steeped in female power—should’ve been a fascinating move.
But the execution is so wildly uneven that it veers from psychological thriller to slapstick farce, often within the same scene.
Cage stars as Edward Malus, a California cop traumatized by a failed rescue who receives a letter from his ex-fiancée asking for help finding her missing daughter on a remote island. When he arrives, he’s met with cryptic villagers, matriarchal paganism, and a perpetual fog of “something’s not right here.”
The original Wicker Man thrived on dread and moral ambiguity; this version thrives on confusion, clumsy exposition, and Cage screaming at and repeatedly punching women in pioneer dresses.
LaBute’s attempts to make a feminist folk horror piece curdle into absurdity. The island’s all-female hierarchy, ruled by Ellen Burstyn’s Sister Summersisle, is meant to feel threatening and alien. Instead, it plays like a fever dream directed by someone who once skimmed a Wicca book at Barnes & Noble. The pacing lurches, the dialogue defies human rhythm, and the mystery unravels with all the grace of a collapsing wicker effigy.
And yet—and yet!—you can’t look away.
Every wrong choice becomes an inspired one. The film has outlived its critics, its memes, and its mockery. It’s achieved accidental immortality through sheer, beautiful failure, and has become part of Cage folklore.
This is not just a movie; it’s a ritual sacrifice at the altar of Cage’s beautiful absurdity.
The Cage Factor:
If there’s one film that proves why Nicolas Cage is a genre unto himself, it’s The Wicker Man.
If the film itself is a failed sermon, Cage is the fiery sermonizer who refuses to let the congregation leave. His performance as Edward Malus is legendary… not because it’s good, but because it’s everything. It’s the distilled essence of Cage: sincerity weaponized into absurdity, intensity transcending logic.
From his deadpan line readings (“Killing me won’t bring back your goddamn honey!”) to his emotional whiplash (“How’d it get burned?! HOW’D IT GET BURNED?!”), Cage treats every moment as life or death. He punches women, dons a bear suit, and shouts at the heavens with Shakespearean anguish… all while somehow radiating total commitment.
You can laugh at the performance, but you can’t deny its power. It’s the purest form of Cage: unguarded, fearless, and utterly, gloriously unhinged.
The infamous “Not the bees!” scene has become cultural canon. It’s quoted, GIFed, and worshiped as meme scripture. But beyond the absurdity, there’s something strangely endearing about Cage’s approach. He doesn’t condescend to the material. He never winks. He plays every insane beat like it’s Hamlet.
In doing so, he single-handedly transforms a disastrous remake into one of the most memorable cult experiences of the 2000s.
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