E's Reviews: Mandy

MANDY is written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Panos Cosmatos and stars Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough and Linus Roache and it is set in the primal wilderness of 1983 where Red Miller, a broken and haunted man hunts an unhinged religious sect who slaughtered the love of his life. This film was screened at quite a few film festivals this past year and gained a ton of critical acclaim, currently sitting at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, and even the audience score is at a whopping 88%. So you know, it’s probably a good film. Horror fans and Nic Cage fans alike have been telling me to see it. So last night, I did...

Let’s begin with the issues I had with the film, primarily, the sound. The 80s synth/hard rock was so blaringly loud, it almost took me right out of the movie, and you could hardly even tell what the actors were saying at some points. The score, when it wasn’t blowing your eardrums to hell, was good...but the aforementioned bleeding of the ears, really ruined a lot of this movie for me. The other thing that really bothered me was the lack of any character development. We don’t even know what the character’s names are, aside from a few members of the religious sect. The names are there, they’re credited, but they never really say their names (or do they and the noise from the overly used synth music drowned it out?) Also, we’re meant to assume right away, no questions asked, that Nicolas Cage’s character, Red, is a badass demon slayer? Where did he learn metallurgy? What’s going on? This is so confusing!

As for the things I liked about it, Nicolas Cage is awesome in this film. There are very few actors who can pull off mania like he can, and he shows us he still has it. Also, Linus Roache’s villain is excellent in this film, I got genuine chills whenever he spoke. The fight sequences and gore were awesome to watch. Some of the visuals were mind-bending, almost reminding me of a fusion of the film Heavy Metal if it had been force fed LSD and went on a bad trip. Some scenes were just immaculately filmed, and I mean they had incredible use of color and the images were just awesome.
If I could sum up Mandy with one sentence, it would be this: Mandy is a bad acid trip through hell, which is probably why it looks and sounds the way it does. I thought Nicolas Cage was awesome, I thought the performances were really quite good. The action and gore was there and was great. The issue with it was really just what I mentioned above, and could probably be seen as nit-picking, if we’re being honest. But I’m a huge fan of independent film making and I think this film really does deserve to be seen and to be talked about. Check it out now, it’s in limited release and I expect it to drop on VOD platforms very soon.

Final Score: 7/10