Movie Review: Mandy

Mandy **** / *****

Directed by: Panos Cosmatos.

Written by: Panos Cosmatos & Aaron Stewart-Ahn.

Starring: Nicolas Cage (Red Miller), Andrea Riseborough (Mandy Bloom), Linus Roache (Sand Jeremiah), Ned Dennehy (Brother Swan), Olwen Fouéré (Mother Marlene), Richard Brake (The Chemist), Bill Duke (Caruthers), Line Pillet (Sister Lucy), Clément Baronnet (Brother Klopek), Alexis Julemont (Brother Hanker), Stephan Fraser (Brother Lewis), Ivailo Dimitrov (Skratch), Hayley Saywell (Sis), Kalin Kerin (Scabs), Paul Painter (Announcer / Cheddar Goblin).

 

What can one say about Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy – a kind of revenge thriller/horror film that plays like a heavy metal concept album split basically into two halves – the first half destroys the main character, the second half rebuilds him. There is lizard like demon bikers, blood galore, and a chainsaw fight as well, and at the center of it is Nicolas Cage, because of course he’s there. Who else would you cast in this role? No one, that’s who. For all the crap Cage takes about his career – and to be fair, much of that crap is earned because of all the crap he’s made – he is still capable doing something like Mandy, a film in which he gives one of the best performances of his career, and one only he could give.

 

The first half of the film has Cage’s Red Miller living in seclusion with his girlfriend, Many (Andrea Riseborough) out in the woods. He’s a lumberjack, she works in a small store, and they spend their time together in relative piece – drinking, eating smoking, watching old movies on TV. They are comfortable with each other, and in love. One day, a crazy cult leader, Jeremiah (Linus Roache) sees Mandy walking down the road, and wants her for himself. So he does the logical thing, and calls upon demon bikers to kidnap her, and bring her to him. Things, of course, don’t go as planned. A horrific sequence in the middle of the film, leaves Red completely destroyed and wounded, and hell-bent on revenge on the people who took everything from him. He’ll get that revenge in the most blood soaked way imaginable.

 

The director of this film is Panos Cosmatos – whose only other film is Beyond the Black Rainbow, a horror film I heard quite a bit about a few years ago, but didn’t actually see. In Mandy, he has the style cranked up to 11, with strange trippy visuals scattered throughout. The first half of the film is essentially a slow trip to hell – even when we see happy moments between Red and Mandy, the tone itself isn’t happy. We know what is coming. The second half of the film is perhaps more predictable – we’ve all seen revenge films before, we know what will happen, and yet it’s still satisfying to see – especially because Cosmatos cranks up the style to ridiculous levels, and Cage and company go right along with him.

 

Mandy is an odd film to right about – mainly because I’m not quite sure how to describe most of it. Part of why it works so well, is because while this is a very stylish film from Cosmatos, he varies the style every so often – scene play out in a distinctive color palette, and then he’s moved on to something completely different the next scene. Visually, the film keeps shifting and changing. Two things kind of keep everything on track – one is Johan Johannsson’s terrific score, which like the style itself, I’m at a loss to explain, and the other is Cage’s performance itself. Yes, Cage goes wildly over the top in the film – taken out of context, you could easily mock pieces of his performances. But within the movie itself, no matter how crazy his performance gets, how unhinged it seems, it makes complete and total sense.

 

Mandy is an exceedingly odd film – but it’s one that draws you in, and keeps you there. It could probably stand to be a little bit shorter (it runs over two hours, and with this type of extremity, anything past 90 minutes starts pushing it a little) – but mainly, it sustains its originality and weirdness. You won’t see another film like Mandy this year – and in this case, that’s a good thing.