Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Chillihead1 Quite possibly the worst re-make of any film and quite possibly one of the worst films ever.

Maz Murdoch (asda-man) You might've heard of a film called The Wicker Man? I've not seen the Nicolas Cage version, but I know it's legendary for being bloody awful. No, I'm talking about the original film from Robin Hardy which featured Edward Woodward becoming embroiled in an increasingly disturbing mystery accumulating to one of the greatest endings in movie history. After a thirty year absence from the big screen, Robin Hardy himself decided to film a sequel called The Wicker Tree. We're allowed to get excited because it's the original director coming back to do it all with a cameo from Lord Summerisle himself! I remember watching the trailer when it came out and thinking that it looked really promising with its surreal, unsettling imagery. The trailer didn't reveal anything about the plot, and after seeing the film I can see why.The Wicker Tree is complete shitake mushrooms. I'm not quite sure what Robin Hardy has been doing for three decades, but he must have been going through some sort of hideous artistic crisis. Maybe he's become a drug addict because he must've been smoking something unsavoury when he was behind the camera for this. The film follows a couple of young, Bible bashing Americans going on a pilgrimage to Scotland to spread the word of God. Just in case you're not sure whether they're American or not from their strong Texan accents, they're complete with cowboy hats and have to sing a country song every five minutes. Our virginal hero, Beth Booby, is even a famous country singer despite having a fairly crap voice.Beth Booby is like the anti-Miley Cyrus which is revealed in a hilarious sequence where Beth and her bo watch themselves on Scottish news performing like Katherine Jenkins in a Church. The news reporter then shows us what Beth Booby used to be like by popping on the world's worst music video featuring Beth line dancing in tiny shorts singing about how much of a harlet she is. All that's missing is her straddling a wrecking ball and licking a sledge hammer. It's an absolutely hilarious moment, just because it's so badly done. It sets the tone for the rest of the film. Her bo is a born again virgin just like his fiancé, although he still finds time skinny dipping and having sex with strangers in lakes.The original Wicker Man became a cult classic after being re-discovered by some small cinemas in 1977. The same is likely to happen to The Wicker Tree, although this will of course reach cult status for all the wrong reasons. The film itself looks like some sort of shoddy Drama for ITV and the acting from the entire cast is even worse. I read somewhere that Joan Collins was going to star in it at one point and that really would've just been the cherry on top of the cake! Some of the cast actually look like they've just been dragged off their local Scottish street and forced to star in the film. My heart broke a little when the great Christopher Lee appeared for a pointless cameo, acting opposite a hopelessly wooden lad painting a bridge.The attempts at intentional comedy are cringe-inducing and completely out of place. The film works much better when it's not trying to be funny. It definitely falls under the 'so bad it's good' category and is brilliantly entertaining all the way through. I must say that the attempts of Wicker Man-esque horror in the last 15 minutes got a bit tedious, because it felt like they were trying to actually generate scares. The rest of the film is a hoot though, for all the wrong reasons. It's as if some kids saw The Wicker Man, got hammered and decided to do a remake. It's extraordinary that it's the total opposite and Robin Hardy himself created this masterpiece of disaster. If I were to rate this film on quality, it would struggle to receive a 2/10, however as it's such a blast to laugh at I have to go higher.

t_atzmueller This Film has been sitting on my shelf for almost two years, and I have been reluctant to watch it until a few days ago. The reason: The original "The Wicker Man" counts among my favorite films. Sure, occasionally I give the tepid Remake with Nicolas Cage a gander, just out of glee or what in German is called "Schadenfreude". But "The Wicker Tree" was the real deal, a sequel in spirit, filmed by the original director Robin Hardy and claiming a cameo appearance by Sir Christopher Lee.Even the hardened Fans must admit that "The Wicker Man" was a great film not because of Hardys skill as a director, but despite of them. "The Wicker Tree" was bad – not as in "so bad it is good", like the remake, but bad as in pointless. It is a virtual retelling of the original story without any of the elements that made the original great. The amazing music, the quirky characters, the foreboding atmosphere, last but not least the eroticism – none of it has made it into this film. Let's start off with the protagonists: where Officer Howie had a naivety about him that made his character amiable, we get two bible-thumbing trailer-trash bumpkins that are about as uncharismatic and non-likable as they come. Anybody who has ever travelled south of St. Louis will probably know that kind of people and will agree: these people are more annoying that Jehovah Witnesses on a field-trip. But director Hardy paints them so unsympathetic, it's almost embarrassing. One almost couldn't wait until they would cart them off to the Wicker Man (in this case a Wicker Tree) – and here comes the major letdown and spoiler: the "heroine" actually survives the movie.The second reason for watching "The Wicker Tree" despite low expectations and better knowledge was that I'm a devoted Sir Christopher Lee fan and a completist in that regard. Supposedly Sir Christopher's guest-role should have been a little longer but apparently ill health prevented that. The cameo lasts by my estimation a little less than a minute (I didn't time it though) and adds absolutely nothing to the story. To mind sprang Oliver Reeds cameo appearance in Ken Russells "Lisztomania" (Reed walks in through one door and Reed exits through another door).To summon up the review in two words: utter disappointment. A fellow reviewer has ended his report such: "Fans may be tempted to watch this based on their admiration for the original. Please don't." I can only add that I've watched "The Wicker Tree" based on my admiration for the original and can do nothing but pass on the warning.3/10

MBunge The worst thing about The Wicker Tree is that it's not even the worst attempt at exploiting the original horror classic. The remake of The Wicker Man starring Nicholas Cage is at least so awesomely point-and-laugh terrible that you can enjoy mocking it. This thing is merely another lame horror flick to throw on the ever-growing pile. Robin Hardy turns in a thoroughly pedestrian job as a director but came up with a stupid, shallow and simplistic script that works best as an unintentional love letter to Anthony Shaffer, writer of the first film. I hate to put it this way but The Wicker Tree looks, sounds and feels like the work of an old man who is well past his creative prime and no one had the decency to tell him. If this move had failed spectacularly, you could credit Hardy with perhaps trying to be bold and imaginative. As it is, it's hard to view this as anything more that a much delayed cash grab.Beth Boothby (Brittania Nicol) is a Christian country singer who, along with her cowboy fiancée Steve (Henry Garrett), travels from Texas to Scotland as a missionary to revive the faith of a small village. Let me stop right here and point something out because I think it gets at the heart of what's wrong with this film. Hardy was bright enough to realize that England has become such a religiously neutered society that he would have to go far afield to find representatives of Christianity to square off against the forces of paganism. However, he didn't bother to think about how that kind of cultural shift would affect anything else. Paganism in a post-Christian 21st century should not be at all the same thing as during the 1970s when church-going was still part of the established order of life in the UK.Let me draw an analogy. Organized crime still exists in America but is, by all accounts, a shell of what is once was. If you made a movie about the Mafia today which didn't acknowledge that reality, that portrayed the Mob as the same sort of pervasive and powerful force it was in the 70s or during Prohibition, you'd end up with a silly and contrived bit of nonsense. Tony Soprano could not be Michael Corleone. Yet, other than bringing in Yanks as his designated Christian victims, Hardy didn't put any thought at all into how the passing of time and cultural and economic changes would require re-imagining the Wicker Man story.The whole of The Wicker Tree is a constant reminder that Hardy didn't think things through when he wrote this screenplay. I mean, the original was set on an island that was physically cut off from civilization. That's the sort of detail that helps the viewer suspend disbelief and accept a pagan cult surviving in secrecy. The Wicker Tree not only takes place on the mainland, it's set in a village near a nuclear power plant. There's nothing isolated or secluded about such a location that would make avoiding public scrutiny easy. And while the original Wicker Man left open the question of what happens after the human sacrifice of a police officer and even hints that things aren't going to turn out well for the murderous cult, this flick ends with an epilogue that expects us to believe that not only can a minor celebrity vanish from a Scottish village with no one caring but that the gruesome death of the founder and leader of the cult would have absolutely no effect on anything. Oh, and it expects you to believe that a human being exposed to flame burns like gas-soaked tissue paper.Anyway, Beth and Steve arrive in Scotland. The pagan villagers want to kill them. They do. The end. Believe me, I put as much thought into those four sentences and Hardy did with this script.Topping it all is that while the original seemed like its pagan cult was at least based on some real and coherent religion, The evil faith in The Wicker Tree appears to be nothing more than horror movie tripe that Hardy just pulled out of his butt. I'm no expert and maybe it is drawn from historical truth, but it's presented so poorly and idiotically that it comes off like made up crap.Now, Honeysuckle Weeks does take her top off and there a good bit of nudity at the end but it is mostly of the real world nudist variety where you kind of wish the folks had kept their clothes on. There isn't anything that's even inadvertently worth seeing here. Watch the original. Watch the remake and turn its awfulness into a drinking game with your friends. Don't waste your time on The Wicker Tree.