Tree of Death

The Wicker Man was famously called "the Citizen Kane of horror films." It's long-gestating seauel, The Wicker Tree, could be called the Citizen Ruth of horror films.

The reader will recall that The Wicker Man (1973) concerned a Scottish policeman's (Edward Woodward) investigation of a missing child on the isolated island of Summerisle, presided over by Christopher Lee, where the cops learns soon enough that he was the victim of a hoax perpetrated by pagans attempting a fertility ritual. Written by Anthony Shaffer of Sleuth fame, the film was mangled by distributors, buried, and eventually resurrected to acclaim by horror fans for its cleverness and account of clashing faiths. There are books of essays about the film, documentaries about its making and its cult, numerous DVD editions, and an American remake starring Nicolas Cage, whose range as an actor tends toward an extreme that the original's director, Robin Hardy, eschewed in his version.

Though the remake has its defenders, perhaps it was dismay at that remake's liberties and distortions that drove Hardy to return to the subject matter. To do so, he adapted his own novel, Cowboys for Christ (2006), a partial sequel, or at least a consideration of the same themes, to the screen in 2010 as The Wicker Tree.

The plot bears some similarity to Shaffer's with some necessary and ofttimes clever updatings. Two young fundamentalist evangelists from Texas, Beth (Brittania Nicol), a gospel singer, and and Steve (Henry Garrett), her cowboy fiancé, arrive by invitation in the village of Tressock  in late April, where they intend to roam door to door to preach the Gospel. Greeted by the wealthy  Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish) and his wife Delia (Jacqueline Leonard), they seem oblivious to the hostile behavior of the citizens. Steve impresses the locals with his "Christian" card tricks, and the village ends up impressed with Beth's singing. Beth is invited to be the May Queen, and Steve to be the Laddie, which requires that he be hunted like a fox by the gentry, only to receive a coprophagic fate for his troubles.

Eventually we learn that the people of Tressock suffer from infertility. There is only one child in the village. The cause of this blight is the nuclear reactor built by Morrison nearby, where radioactive water has seeped into the lower water tablets. Unaware of the real reason, some of the women attribute their inability to have children to serious under-fucking, such as Lolly (Honeysuckle Weeks), who tries to compensate with multi-coupling sessions with the local constabulary. Steve comes upon Lolly one morning as she is bathing in the local river, and she seduces him away from his vow of chastity with Beth.¹ Fans of Ms. Weeks from her role as Samantha Stewart on Foyle's War will see a character very much different from her – and see a lot of her.

Under the misdirecting influence of Morrison, the people of Tressock are sun worshipers, putting their hope in Sulis to save their future. In this way, The Wicker Tree mimics Citizen Ruth by pitting two brands of extreme moral conduct, the chastity embracing young saving themselves for marriage (like the kids in the horror satire Teeth), and the desperate characters whose view of sexuality is less sybaritic than medicinal. Wicker Tree also juggles other aspects of contemporary British life, such as the wildly polarized views on both nuclear power and fox hunting.

The Wicker Tree does not have Wicker Man's surface seriousness that hides a radical humor about single minded advocates at either end of the scale. The film asks us to more or less side with two protagonists who are presented to us as buffoons, not unlike the couple at the center of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Steve is a parody of a Texas "cowboy." Before she was born again, Beth appeared in a Jessica Simpson style CW video that, glimpsed on TV, is so poorly staged as to be laughable in an unintended manner. The film is poorly staged, or blocked, and lapses into low humor.² The village has the kind of heavily manicured and hyper-green grass and clean roads found in Midsommer Murders.

Worse, though, is that some of the situations don't make sense. If the villagers want Beth to be the May Queen, why do they attempt to poison her and turn her into a desiccated statue? If the villagers want Steve to make it to a certain castle so that they can surround him and eat him, why do they cut his saddle so that he will fall off the horse before he gets there? These are just two of numerous plot elements that are either unanswered or don't make sense.

That being said, The Wicker Tree is often entertaining as it grapples with polarizing ideas and extreme beliefs and behaviors, and with the bleakness and nihilism that is typical of horror films lately.

1 In retrospect the scene is poignant, since Lolly is inviting the fertilizing powers of the sun within the very substance that is sterilizing her.

2 There is a scene in which Morrison's man Friday, Beame, is nearly castrated by Beth, and is repaired by a scullery maid in the kitchen. It's the kind of broad accent-driven humor formerly found in the British Carry On series.