Day 13: Mandy (2018)

Goal: Watch the midnight movie du jour.

What I know about it:

It sounds like a big hit, but it wasn’t. A violent rampage movie about Nicolas Cage taking revenge on a hippie cult. It made $1.8 million on a $6 million budget. It has a reputation for being strange, slow, and surreal. It’s the kind of movie people see at midnight and talk about for years afterward. Perhaps.

When I was putting this list together, my AI interface suggested I save Mandy for Halloween. I might still watch a few more of these before I put the project to bed this year, but this one felt like the right one for the actual day.

It has an 83 on Metacritic, which makes it the third-highest-rated movie on my list so far, behind Eyes Without a Face (90) and Eraserhead (87). It’s tied with The Lighthouse. People talk about Mandy in that same category — one of those “you should have seen this by now” movies.

—

After the movie:

The movie I hoped it would be was better than the one it actually was.

The first half is fantastic. Probably the best stretch of any movie I’ve seen during this project. The characters feel real, the dialogue is sharp and nuanced, and the direction is confident. The soundtrack is that retro ’80s synth style, like Drive or It Follows. The movie looks incredible — everything drenched in hot pinks and deep purples. I have never had a chilling association with this color scheme before

The romance works brilliantly. Nicolas Cage is slightly miscast (far too old), but his scenes with Andrea Riseborough are tender and believable. They’re the kind of pair who seem to know that the best thing either of them could be doing — anywhere, anytime — is just being with each other.

One of the best scenes involves Mandy talking about astronomy with Red. She asks him for his favorite planet. He says Saturn, and mentions that it was one of the first planets Earth discovered, so there are all these old legends about it. Then he changes his mind, referencing the strange cosmic stuff she’s been describing in the science-fiction novels she’s reading.

> “I like Galactus.”

“Galactus isn’t a planet.”

“No, but he eats planets.”

There’s no doubt that Red and Mandy are a perfect couple.

The cult is the best part, narratively — actual hippies turned true believers. There’s something deeply uncomfortable about people that certain.

Then the second half loses its way. It becomes a different film — louder, simpler. I wanted more blood. Not less. It feels like it stalls at the finish line. There’s nothing here I haven’t seen many times before.

But I did love one moment at the end. Red sits behind the wheel after it’s all over, covered in blood, and imagines Mandy sitting beside him, smiling. He looks at her like she’s still there, proud of him somehow. It’s the first time the movie feels quiet again. It’s killing in the name of love, but he’s still trying to make sure she would have approved.

The biker gang doesn’t work. They seem like demons or aliens, and that gives the cult credibility. I would have much preferred them to seem certain but fully absolute deranged. To make them seem right kills the tension.

I’ve been catching up on Nicolas Cage movies — Mandy, Pig, Longlegs, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Renfield, Arcadian — and I’m still not sure what to think of his modern era. He might be the most overrated actor today in small-budget film. Every project has a strong idea and a weak script. He finds interesting material, but the movies never quite work all the way through.

At this point, putting Cage in a movie feels like a shortcut to getting it made. Directors write for him, say to themselves, “Maybe if we write a part for him, he’ll actually do it.” He says yes, and that’s enough — green light. When the movies work, they are applauded, but the results are always secretly uneven.

He could be doing more to shape better projects for the directors who want to work with him. He doesn’t, and that feels like wasted potential — his and theirs.

6.5 / 10