The Wicker Man Made Me Follow Jesus

Mike Duran's thoughts on The Wicker Man nail it:

"Not only does The Wicker Man serve as a warning against spiritual naivete and complacency, it illustrates the stark, very real differences between world religions."

...and I would add that it does it with the literary and visual mastery of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, C.S. Lewis and Fritz Lang, combined.

I might be biased. I was a pluralist anti-christian growing up (sort of a reverse Animal Farmer - All religions are equal: one religion is less equal than others.) with no interest in really understanding or studying the roots of faith. The Wicker Man gave me a thrilling, devastating crash course in the subject, to shocking results.

I found myself aligning fairly tightly with the odd and complicated residents of Summer's Isles, the pagans, and scoffing at the simplistic faith of the protagonist. He grated on me. But the movie was compelling enough, and though I fully expected some sort of twist that either revealed the hero to be either a villain by the end, or at worst, the unwitting tool of some sort of counterplot against the suspected but innocent Lord Summerisle.

The thing I did not expect - no, could not expect - is the one thing that instantly cemented the picture as a harrowing, strangely uplifting classic, one that I've meditated on many, many times over the past twenty years.