Review #1,416: 'Mandy' (2018)

Horror fans were foaming at the mouth as soon as the first trailer dropped for Panos Cosmatos' Mandy - a hallucinogenic mash-up of revenge thriller and psychedelic horror featuring a Nicolas Cage well and truly off the leash. And for good reason. Whilst Mandy may not have much to offer in terms of plot and actual meaning, as a purely sensory experience, this 80's heavy metal album come-to-life will get certainly get a rise out of you, whether you're on the film's side or not. The story concerns lumberjack Red Miller (Cage) and his artist girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), who live in peaceful solitude in a cabin in the woods. They talk of their favourite planets and never leaving their isolated home, but their happy existence is soon to be pulled away from them. Nearby, a cult led by failed musician Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache) happen to be passing through, and once the Manson-like prophet lays his eyes on Mandy, he simply must have her.

Sand trusts his second-in-command Brother Swan (Ned Dennehy) to kidnap Mandy and bring her to him, and he does so by summoning a band of leather-draped demons who look like they've stumbled off the set of the latest Hellraiser film. They tie Mandy up and force-feed her LSD in preparation for Jeremiah's grand seduction, which includes playing her his terrible music and flashing his naked torso. When Mandy doesn't play ball, they punish her insolence in front of the bound Red, who watches in horror as his one true love is snatched away forever. They leave Red for dead, only the gruff lumberjack manages to escape to plan his bloody revenge. Handed a small arsenal of brutal weapons by his friend Caruthers (Bill Duke), Red aims to take out the bikers first, before moving on to the hippy freaks. What unfolds is a sequence of battles played out almost like a computer game, as Red cuts, chops and snaps his way up to the main target. This is the kind of film in which an early sighting of a chainsaw is of a promise of its reappearance later down the line (and it'll be way better than you expected).

If you've ever slipped on some headphones, blasted out some classic heavy metal, and dropped a shit-ton of LSD, then you'll have likely experienced something similar to Mandy. Backed by a magnificently industrial score by the late Johan Johannsson, Mandy is a trip from start to finish. The first hour moves at a crawl, moving its characters into place and easing us into this strange world of scorched red skies and masked hitmen in gimp suits, before unleashing a second hour of hardcore violence and Nic Cage at his most Nic Cage-iest. The scene in which Cage breaks down in a bathroom drinking whatever vodka he doesn't pour into his gaping wounds while not wearing trousers would usually be the stuff of unintentional comedy gold, but it's actually damn fine acting, closer to Face/Off crazy than Dog Eat Dog crazy. Little makes sense and the characters spit hokey dialogue like something out of the fantasy novels Mandy loves so much, but the whole experience is so cerebral and in-your-face that it's difficult not to get swept up into the madness. It will divide most down the middle, between those who will find the pace and intensity off-putting and those who will appreciate the VHS-murkiness of it all. Personally, I'm somewhere in between. At two hours, it's too long, but there's a breathtaking 100-minute movie in there somewhere.


Directed by: Panos Cosmatos
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Ned Dennehy, Richard Brake, Bill Duke
Country: USA/Belgium/UK

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie