"[A] lot of people when they say, 'I love The Wicker Man,' they're talking about that kind of amazingly horrific ending."

--Writer/director Neil LaBute, missing the point of Robin Hardy's film.

I am not an unreasonable woman. Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man may be one of my favorite movies, but that doesn't mean I can't accept a few changes. So, Neil LaBute's version isn't a musical: I can live with that. Turning Summerisle into a matriarchy modeled on bee society is an interesting take on the story. (The honeycomb-shaped windows are a nice touch). But when you replace one of horror's most nuanced protagonists with your standard Hollywood cop, I get pissed off.

Edward Malus (Cage) is a cop who's seen a little girl and her mother killed by a truck. He sees the girl and her Don't Look Now- style red jacket everywhere; in fact, he even sees her in the photo of another girl who's gone missing. The lost child's name is Rowan Woodward.

Aside from finishing off a cheesy reference to the original film, Rowan lives on an island off the coast of Washington called Summersisle. Edward goes there and finds a colony of women who are all called "Sister" and won't give him any straight answers. Not even their queen bee Sister Summersisle (a sadly underused Ellen Burstyn) will tell him anything useful. And although there are a handful of men on the island, they can't help the officer, either: their tongues have been removed.

Despite the locals' caginess and the possibility that a little girl could die if he doesn't find her soon, Edward never feels anything more than annoyance. Edward goes to the schoolhouse to ask the girls if they've seen Rowan; he finds them learning about phallic symbols. The scene plays almost exactly like it does in the original--complete with the officer swiping the chalkboard with an eraser and writing ROWAN clumsily in the swath--except for one crucial detail. In Robin Hardy's film, Sergeant Howie is thoroughly disgusted. "Miss," he tells the teacher, " you can be quite sure that I shall report this to the proper authorities." But all Edward Malus says is, "Things have changed since I was in school."

A hardboiled cop is a fine hero for a movie like 8mm: snuff rings are so intrinsically disturbing that a little unaffectedness helps diffuse the tension. But in The Wicker Man, there's nothing obviously horrible about the island. Without stalkers, cats jumping from closets or even darkness (both films take place in broad daylight, for the most part), the officer himself has to cue us to be scared. We feed off Sergeant Howie's anxiety, growing more and more uneasy as the film goes on. But Edward Malus never really gets scared, and neither do we.

More importantly, the policeman's fear is essential to the film's "amazingly horrific" ending. What happens to Sergeant Howie is the absolute worst thing that could happen to him. If it happened to, say, me--a not even twice-a-year Catholic who'd probably join the girls jumping over a bonfire--it just wouldn't be the same. Yes, Edward Malus's last name is a Latin word that sometimes means "unfortunate," but there's nothing particularly, personally unfortunate about his fate. (Having a bee venom allergy and being stranded on an island famous for its honey doesn't count). He lives in a state of fearless irritation, and, ultimately, dies in one.

I think that The Wicker Man has so many themes--religious and cultural tolerance, societal structures, moral relativism--that someone could remake it well, with a different focus. I don't even think that the clash of old and new religions is essential to the story. But the policeman who investigates the island is essential; it's too bad that Neil LaBute and Nicholas Cage seem to have forgotten that.