A needless remake, though not as big a time-waster for the viewer (an hour and three-quarters) as for the writer and director, Neil LaBute, known for less generic stuff like In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors. He has weeded out some of the silliness of the 1973 British original, but that bit of gardening is offset by his transplanting of the action to a Goddess-worshipping, organic-farming colony on a private island in Puget Sound, where a California motorcycle cop (Nicolas Cage, not altogether serious about the assignment) has come on a personal invitation from his former fiancée to search for her missing child. Further, the pruning of the protagonist's Christian faith and the grafting-on of a fresh mental trauma and some cheap-thrill dreams are no help at all. If the film serves no other purpose, it at least allows the filmmaker's suspected undercurrent of misogyny to erupt unambiguously and unapologetically into a geyser. The ad campaign — "A psychological thriller. A mind blowing conclusion" — leaves no possibility, even if you missed the original, that the ending is going to sneak up on you. Unless, that is, the campaign strategists thought your mind might be blown by the unannounced guest appearance of James Franco in a redundant epilogue, or by the closing dedication of the film to the late punk rocker, Johnny Ramone. (Whoa.) With Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Molly Parker, Frances Conroy, and Leelee Sobieski. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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