The Wicker Tree

Robin Hardy – 2011 – England

Pulling a 'Gilliam,' poor Robin Hardy had been trying to make this movie for approximately a decade, during which time it had several casts assembled and was variously announced as May Day, The Riding of the Laddie and Cowboys for Christ.  As a loose sequel or companion film to his mega-cult-classic The Wicker Man of 1973, and as a repudiation of the ridiculously insulting American remake (2006), The Wicker Tree was anxiously anticipated, including by me.  While it isn’t the masterpiece we’d love to have, it’s still an extremely interesting curiosity, much like its predecessor.  It has an odd slack or awkward quality that makes it seem more like an episode of Night Gallery or Kolchak than what we’re used to in feature films.  This is probably due to the fact that Hardy himself isn’t really a feature director - (The Wicker Tree is only his third in a 40+ year career) -  but it is also deliberate; a continuation of the “film fantastique” style with which he approached the earlier film, which essentially defies the expectations and patterns of genre and storytelling.  Obviously, this has resulted in considerable hostility from audiences, from newcomers and from fans who nevertheless fully bought into the surreal pagan musical horror/comedy The Wicker Man.  In the new film, a pair of young Texan born-again Christians – Beth (Brittania Nicol), a successful country singer, and her fiancé Steve (Henry Garrett) – head to Scotland for two years of proselyting.  Unfortunately, the village they end up in not only still practices the old religion of its Celtic ancestry but just happens to be in need of a human sacrifice for its pending May Day festival.  This time around, there’s little suspense in waiting to see what happens to the foreigners, but Hardy wisely compensates for this with a little surprise or two along the way, including one surrounding the fact that the village hopes for their sacrifice to restore some fertility ten years after a nearby nuclear accident seems to have rendered everyone sterile.  Christopher Lee, Lord Summerisle himself from The Wicker Man, makes a welcome if brief and requisite cameo as the "old gentleman."