3. Nicolas Cage – The Wicker Man (2006)
A remake of the 1973 classic, 2006’s The Wicker Man tells the story of a police officer who goes to a remote island in search of a missing girl, only to find that the locals are strangely hostile and the island is populated almost entirely by females.
It’s no doubt intended to be a creepy, slow-building horror flick, so who better to cast in the lead role than the erratic Nicolas Cage to lend a little lunacy to proceedings?
The result warps what could have been an incredibly atmospheric creep-fest into an unintended laugh-riot. Cage has proven that he’s more than capable of tackling horror with his roles in films like Color Out of Space, Mandy, and Willy’s Wonderland, but these roles were all tailored to Cage’s over-the-top style. The Wicker Man is the film that highlighted what Cage could do with the right material, but for this particular brand of psychological horror, he was entirely the wrong choice.
Cage works best in less serious films, or in roles written to specifically cater to his talents. Instead, The Wicker Man achieved infamy for having completely miscast its lead role.