Honey Trap

 Watching the Nicholas Cage Wicker Man (The Wicker Cage?) - it's research, honest, guv - and I'd forgotten Rowan Morrison is called Rowan Woodward (pronounced WoodWARD here, not Woodwood, in the approved English manner). It's a remarkably poor film and, as the writer also directed it, I can't be certain it isn't intended to be funny. The performances, the slow, flatness of the direction, the music, the thinking that "Hey - what if beautiful blonde Aryan women were the monsters, that'd be cool" - the bits nicked directly from the original in a way that seems like pastiche rather than plot. The whole bees thing. And the fact that he's come to a bee island and is allergic to bee stings. Like Indy and snakes: "I hate bees!" he screams, every five minutes. The endless bristling rudeness of ALL the women. Nicholas Cage dreams he's holding his drowned daughter in his arms and, on waking and discovering he's not, exclaims "GODDAMMIT!", exactly as though he'd trodden on a plug and had to walk it off. 

"Bring me sunshine..."

It must be a joke. Why Neil La Bute? Why? And why is there no charm? The original is funny and charming and we're in no doubt who the party pooping baddy is. Until they burn him. Here the women are astringent, hissing, humourless, painted like figures on an urn. Everyone is uptight. Kate Beahan, as Cage's lost love, looks traumatised as a pieta throughout. 

Spoilers: at the end, when he's captured and the conspiracy is revealed, they break his legs with a hammer, then winch him, upside down, into the giant wicker bonfire by his broken legs. That's just mean, ladies. Before this, they stick a wicker hat with a funnel sticking out the top of his head and scoop a load of bees into it. They had this hat pre-made. The bees were primed. Why? Is this something they do every time they need to lure - wait a minute - a man who has impregnated one of their own and is drawn to the island by a faked kidnapping plot implicating his daughter in child sacrifice? Then they just stick the bee helmet on him for good measure. Also, the Wicker Man he's trapped in is lit by his own gleeful daughter. C'mon ladies, again, that's just mean. I don't think any legitimate religious worship should contain this level of spiteful irony. 

In the original film, the islanders link arms and joyfully sing "Sumer is icumin in". It's a celebration. The gods will surely be appeased, the natural order reinstated, happiness and fecundity restored to the island. Here they just shout "Kill the drone." Sake. 

I can't believe this film isn't a huge hit in the manosphere, in the same way "American Psycho" apparently is. It displays a literal honey trap, for a start, and the misanthropic certainty the world is set  against a self proclaimed incel underclass. It's a film which sees cheerleaders, lesbians and hippy intellectual types dominate dumb grunting cucks, and where a decent, principled man is just trying to understand what the hell is going on, but he can't read the cues, can't fathom the plot, so they sneer at him, or bristle at him, and eventually he has to pull a gun on one of them just to get a ride on her bike. Also, they hide crows in desks. An older woman takes him to one side and patiently explains exactly what's going on, but he still doesn't understand because he's so focused on getting back with his old girlfriend. So he punches a woman in the face and steals her clothes, and they break his legs, stick a mask of bees on him, winch him upside down and get a little girl to set him on fire. 

And that's the experience of every American high school boy who can't do sports.