Nicolas Cage.
The couple lies in bed, their bodies bathed in saturated primary colors. There's an age gap between them, but the spark is clearly palpable. There was violence in their lives before finding each other, but it's apparent they have a calming effect on each other. A boring night in their modest cabin in the woods near California's Shadow Mountains counts as a daily victory for the quiet lumberjack and the raven-haired illustrator with a dark past. Red and Mandy thrive in their cozy cocoon, their oasis from sinister forces that, unbeknownst to them, will rain down upon them with righteous anger.
There's some choice kickass mayhem in “Mandy,” a hallucinatory variation on that shopworn genre chestnut that is the revenge tale, but it behooves viewers to be patient. The 2018 Sundance Film Festival sensation sure takes its time to arrive at the same blood-caked spot countless straight-to-DVD B-movies have before it, but when it comes to the cinema of Panos Cosmatos, it's all about the journey. Prepare to get a contact high from this trippy odyssey with breathtaking visuals and a high body count.
Andrea Riseborough.
The year is 1983, and the time period informs the way Cosmatos indulges and subverts horror tropes. On his drive home from work in his striped Bronco, Red (an initially understated Nicolas Cage) listens to President Ronald Reagan rail against pornography and abortion, but the commander in chief's outrage feels a world away. In fact, even though the film's setting is real, there's always the sense we've entered an alternate reality. “Mandy” looks and feels like an issue of “Heavy Metal” magazine brought to life by Peter Greenaway. It oozes forward like a John Carpenter movie on Quaaludes, the more effectively to immerse viewers in this tactile, meticulously conceived world.
Unfortunately for Mandy (the esteemed Andrea Riseborough, channeling Shelley Duvall), she catches the eye of Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), the leader of a hippie cult with the fitting New Age moniker Children of the New Dawn, as she walks to work. Bewitched by her ethereal energy, Sand orders his followers to kidnap her, with the help of a biker gang made up of demonic creatures who recall Clive Barker's Cenobites. Their diet appears to consist of human flesh and a strong form of LSD.
Linus Roache.
OK, at this point you're either salivating or thoroughly turned off by this movie geek-friendly, Fangoria-ready scenario. But before you dismiss “Mandy” as the kind of fanboy fodder that's not your speed, let me stress two things: 1. At least during its trance-like first hour, there's nothing quite like it out there (emphasis on out there), and 2. This is all every bit as self-indulgent as it sounds. Cosmatos has celluloid in his DNA; he's the son of the late George P. Cosmatos, director of man's man fare like “Rambo: First Blood Part II” and “Tombstone.” But suffice it to say the younger Cosmatos, who previously helmed “Beyond the Black Rainbow” back in 2010, goes to the beat of his own drum. And in this case, in ways both thrilling and exhausting, a little Cosmatos goes a looooong way.
If the first hour of “Mandy” flows in a way accurately described by critic Noel Murray as a lava lamp, the film makes a noticeable aesthetic shift during hour two, after Sand's zealots wreak havoc on Red and Mandy. (It must be said at this point many of the horrors depicted here are not for the squeamish.) But before Red gets ready to unleash unholy hell on this Peoples Temple in miniature, Cosmatos inserts a scene that serves as a crash course on the heretofore largely unexplained weirdness. Red means to exact retribution for his attackers' dastardly deeds, so he seeks help from Caruthers (actor and director Bill Duke), a recluse who shares some intel about Sand's cult and the biker gang.
“So watcha gonna do with that thing?” Caruthers asks Red as he brandishes his crossbow, nicknamed “the reaper.”
Nicolas Cage.
“I'm going hunting,” Red replies, and boy, he ain't kidding.
The rest of “Mandy” plays like the bastard child of “Mad Max” and “Repo Man” by way of Rob Zombie. And yet there's a lyrical quality to the carnage. Cosmatos handles the cathartic dispatchings with gusto and verve. No matter how chaotic this feverish excess may seem, there's never a doubt the filmmaker is in complete control of every frame. In other words, if you dare take the plunge, you will witness one of the most skillfully rendered chainsaw battles ever captured on film.
Andrea Riseborough.
“You exude a cosmic darkness,” a character utters at one point, an observation that could also be applied to this cult tale in search of its own devoted cult following. For all its spellbinding tableaux and accomplished production design, “Mandy's” most valuable asset is Cage, who spends half the movie with his face covered in blood that, appropriately enough, looks more like war paint. When he screams in rage and agony, he appeases the movie gods, and gives this primal yet artful labor of love its haunted soul.
“Mandy” is now available on streaming platforms, but why pass up the opportunity to experience it on the big screen? It's showing Saturday at 11:30 p.m. as part of the Coral Gables Art Cinema's After Hours series. For tickets, go to www.gablescinema.com/events/mandy.
