It’s quite a difficult and unused mode of storytelling, especially in horror, to have your main character not realize they’re in a horror movie. Even more so, thinking they’re the righteous one, especially when self-unawareness of our main character becomes scary. Since The Wicker Man resists the urge to scare us, what is then unsettling is what could read as banal. The film falls in place with others of its era, like Don’t Look Now or Rosemary’s Baby, where things are unsettling throughout, then towards the third act things ramp up into being even more frightening than the quiet drama before. More than a drama, The Wicker Man is a mystery, before becoming a backdoor horror film. The set-up is like an episode of Dateline, yet there is no edited package of the perfect version of Sargent Howie.
“The Citizen Kane of horror movies” sounds like a title you’ll see given to the latest ambitious entry in we like to call “elevated horror.” The Wicker Man fell into obscurity after its opening in 1973, but in 1977 it received just that commendation in a commemorative issue of the American film magazine Cinefantastique. While The Wicker Man and Citizen Kane are both great films, they do both do feel totemic in the shape in which they choose to take for genre. Police officer Howie (Edward Woodward) investigates the disappearance of a Rowan Morrison (Geraldine Cowper) after receiving a letter from a small village– despite nobody from the town seeming to know her. After much ridicule and dismay shown from Howie towards the town, as a devout Christian, he takes issue with how this society functions with the fascination with Celtic paganism.
Howie’s suspicions are correct; he eventually finds Rowan, although she proves to be just bait for him to be ensnared in a ceremony to ensure that the small Scottish village has a prosperous spring– and also a rejection of Christianity. While traditional religious practices are represented by Howie– countercultural and more complex belief systems not yet catching onto the mainstream– The Wicker Man treats the more taboo religion we witness on the island as misunderstood. It’s a matter of perspective, really, as Howie still doesn’t know he is in a horror movie until the final five minutes, and also never realizes he is the villain. It’s this unawareness that’s deeply disturbing; he has such a disdain for everyone, yet he also has little to no clarity for the deep sense of unease we are constantly privy to.
Of course, the sense of dread and tension stems from the haunting subgenre of folk horror. With the ability to influence of a genre as much as Wicker Man has become influential to films decades later like Midsommar or Kill List, folk horror can unlock how to weaponize the atmosphere to be just as frightening as a slasher movie full of jump scares. If one of horror’s main objectives is to build up to characters thinking things are okay when they deeply aren’t, folk horror can thrive there regardless of the time in which it’s set in. Its this timelessness that I love, and ultimately The Wicker Man lingers with me. It’s a movie that feels slightly off and not concerned with if malicious suspicions are confirmed, but rather when are they. Leaving us with an undeniable image of the titular Wicker Man engulfed in flames while a senseless sacrifice takes place on one end, the prophecy is fulfilled as a prosperous spring is to come on another.
The Wicker Man
1973
dir Robin Hardy
92 min.
New 4K restoration opens Friday, 6/23 @ Somerville Theatre – click here for showtimes and ticket info
