2018 Film Review: Mandy (2018)

Directed by: Panos Cosmatos
Written by: Panos Cosmatos
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache
IMDb Link

If you like the idea of Nicholas Cage going on a revenge rampage against religious zealots in a world coloured and stylised entirely by neon, synth music and sexual, heavy metal imagery, then this is the movie for you.

Cage is Red Miller, a lumberjack who hunts down and slaughters every member of an insane religious sect after they murder the love of his life, the titular Mandy (Riseborough). That's literally the entire plot; its very bare, with all idyllic romance and haunting build up in the first half, followed by events that feel like an understatement to call "extreme".

The film is all style over substance, and my word, what incredible, inalienable style it is. The film paints it world with a heavy dose of neon, giving it this dream-like quality; mercurial, primal, the film moves from one emotional extreme to another, and the sharp contrast of colour amplifies all of it. The music builds on this idea as well, not just in how it's used but also when it's not used, with a fantastic score that just as easily embeds a sense of foreboding with complete silence as it does agonising unease from a few drawn out notes. That pain can turn to terror so easily here as well, with the hardcore, near-demonic designs of some of the zealots as an image of metal smashed against the neon world. This whole film feels like an exercise in using niche, psychedelic art-house style to tell an otherwise straightforward story; it's the way Red goes about slaughtering these man-made monsters, fueled by literally God knows what, and the way the film manages to consistently surprise with its escalation. No matter how crazy the film gets, it somehow gets crazier.

It's fitting, then, that part of why all this works as well as it does is because of Cage. Regardless of the role he's given, the man always put in his best effort, and in this case the role demanded some of the most incredibly raw emotions; rage and wrath distilled to perfection, the man becomes these concepts, he embodies them in ways only a man of Cage's particular talent can, offering exactly what the role needed to be utterly bewitching. Credit where it's due, Riseborough and Roache and indeed every bit player in this piece offer consistently appropriate performances, but with Cage as the focus this film is as insane as it needs to be.

It's not something I expect for a lot of people to enjoy, but I can't stop thinking about it and I can't recommend it enough if you think you can stomach it.

The Short Version: Mandy is off the chain(saw), face-meltingly crazy; I was enthralled from start to finish and I'm still not quite sure what happened.

Rating: 8/10

Published September 22nd, 2018