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The 1973 version had a peculiarly British blandness to it, a drab ordinariness and a plodding, linear story progression that rendered the occult elements much more deeply troubling for their everydayness. The practices which so disturb Sergeant Howie are rooted in very real, very ancient pagan beliefs, their stony roots (and the clash with orthodox Christianity) buried deep in British soil, woven into the cycle of the seasons in harvest and May Day celebrations and the rituals of birth, procreation and death.

Hey, didn't they paint their faces like that in 'Braveheart'?

For the historically convincing pagan religion (many wiccans and neo-pagans celebrate the original film for its authenticity), LaBute substitutes a made-up feminist (or misogynist?) beekeeper's cult. Sister Summersisle replaces Lord Summerisle (and what's with that extra "s"? Did LaBute get the wrong pronunciation in his head when he read about the movie as a kid? Couldn't Nicolas Cage pronounce "Summerisle" properly?) as the queen bee in a metaphorical beehive community of dominant women and barely-seen, never-heard subservient males. It's a fascinating invention, but ultimately takes away from the unsettling and unexpected plausibility of the story and its resonances.

Critics will readily seize on the new film's quirks and deem it a turkey. It's easy to point out the obvious incongruities of tone and routine dead-end plot detours, easy targets for mockery. But the film has many (moderate) strengths. There's a great sense of place—though it must be said that the Pacific Northwest has been far creepier, in The Ring, or even Twin Peaks. The Angelo Badalamenti score is fine and fittingly filmish, though surprisingly lacking his distinctive sense of menace.

It's easy to mock the sometimes jarring incongruities of tone, but they're utterly true to the spirit of the original, and true in turn to the spirit of May Day (when both pictures set their story), a spring fertility festival that mixed playfully outrageous folly with deadly earnest pagan ritual. If Cage traipsing through the woods in a bear costume is an easy target for the scoffers, so was Edward Woodward in a Punch costume, chased by a hobby-horse—and frankly, those are some of the elements that are most interesting in both films. For my money, it was gutsy for LaBute to retain the bizarre—I only wish he'd done more of it.

For the average moviegoer, this remake is likely to be more enjoyable than the Robin Hardy original. The troubling mix of occult elements and pagan sexuality lend the original cult classic most of its interest, taking seriously the clash of two very real spiritual worldviews—but in the process, and adding in the oddly drab and dreary tone of much of the film, it would likely alienate many of the viewers who would consider its core themes worth considering. The un-sexed, de-spiritualized modern retread renders the story far more palatable for many moviegoers, but what remains is far more ordinary, and much more dismissible. It's just a movie.

Many folks who see Cage's Hollywood version this weekend will like it better than they would the stranger, artier Hammer Studio original. But they'll forget it by Monday—something you couldn't count on with the original.

1. The "beekeeper cult" of the film resembles some "New Age" or neo-pagan practices, perhaps even certain forms of wiccan religion. What do you think about such "religious" people you may have come in contact with? Jesus says, "Whoever is not with me is against me," but on another occasion he says, "Whoever is not against me is for me." Which of these principles would you apply to religious but non-Christian people you have met

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