MANDY
Haunting, tragic, and twisted:
MANDY is an experience that won’t appeal to everyone. It’s a film that
will divide horror fans when the year in review comes around. Director
Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow) and composer Johan Johannsson
(Sicarrio) have crafted a surreal nightmare landscape of exquisitely
shot visuals and haunting sounds. This is at once a beautiful and
terrifying vision and it is totally insane. Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) is
a logger living in the unspecified wilderness in the early 1980’s. He’s
in love with Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), a haunting and self-assured
woman who catches the eye of a cult-leader, Jeremiah Sand (Linus
Roache). The idyllic life the couple share is shattered when Sand sends
his cult to find the girl, and the couple are subjected to a drug-addled
torture.
Divided into three acts with title
cards, the film is a slow burn to that final act. Roache delivers a
manic performance as Sand, a spiritual new-age “Hippy” playing with a
messianic complex that serves to blind him to his own narcissism. His
rag tag assemblage of followers are lunatics devoted to the man-boys
shallow definition of “enlightenment”. They serve to inflate his ego,
though the film quickly reveals him to be a charlatan and fraud who long
ago started to believe in his own lies. When he sees Mandy, he wants
her. He feels he should always get what he wants, that the world exists
to serve him. His effort is met with a turn from Riseborough that is at
once heroic and tragic.
The film becomes a nightmare swirl
of pain and heartache. The bombastic score grates the nerves, a
synthesizer blend of uncomfortable minor keys that rip hard into the
conscious mind. Reminiscent of past films like Blade Runner and Risky
Business, the music and color palette of the film are characters in and
of themselves. We’re in a reality that seems familiar but also carries
an epic fantasy level of dark energy, something bordering on the
supernatural. There are no dragons here, but there are monsters that may
have once been men. And the Reaper is coming.
It’s that third act where Nicolas
Cage takes control of the reins and takes off all the gloves. He’s on a
rip roaring rampage kill spree that will see him dive into the darkest
depths of hell itself to do the things that must be done. It’s a truly
awe-inspiring performance from Cage, a swing for the fences that rewards
and pays back all dividends in full. Washed in blood and horror, Mandy
delivers the goods.
9.5 out of 10.
PLAYING LOCALLY AT THE OSIO THEATER WHERE THE POPCORN IS AWESOME!
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