Director-writer Neil Labute talked about The Wicker Man (Warner Bros., 9.1) at Comic Con last weekend, and also showed a scene from the opening of the film. Nic Cage is a motorcycle cop pulling over a young mother because her daughter has thrown a doll out in the road. The scene starts to get creepy, and then creeper still…and then shocking, and then demonic.
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The Wicker Man trailer is even creepier. They’ve both left me with a feeling that it’s going to be a very unnerving, very scary film . Labute is one of the brightest directors around, but I wouldn’t call him warm and fuzzy. And you need a little touch of steel in your soul, I think, to push the right buttons and do the job on people. Labute acknowledged last weekend that the subject, deep down, has something to do with his feelings about women.
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