Children of the Wicker Man review – how the folk-horror classic haunted the family that made it

Director Robin Hardy’s children lay bare the sometimes agonised family background to a movie that went from ruinous flop to cult favouriteThis documentary is a collaboration between Justin Hardy and Dominic Hardy, two of film director Robin Hardy’s children (he had seven in all, and was married five times), and it delves into the legacy of both their father and his most enduring work, 1973 folk-horror classic The Wicker Man. The latter still stands today, for all its imperfections and peculiarities, as one of the most unsettling and paradoxically influential British films of all time, despite being a box-office flop on its initial release. This latest work is partly an account of The Wicker Man’s troubled production – a story that’s been told in books and journalism a fair few times already – and its strange reemergence as a cult movie-cum-fetish object, and partly a therapeutic exercise for the brothers themselves, full of raw feeling that’s sometimes painful to watch.However, while the brothers’ willingness to share their pain remains admirable, their film feels hampered by omissions and silences. On some level it is haunted by the ghosts of significant players in the story who …

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