Mandy (2018)
Directed by Panos Cosmatos
The Shadow Mountains, 1983. Red and Mandy lead a loving and peaceful existence; but when their pine-scented haven is savagely destroyed, Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire.
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Some examples are: Red and Mandy live near Crystal Lake (a nod to Friday the 13th ), the biker gang shares many characteristics with the Cenobites of Hellraiser , a chainsaw fight that will remind you of Texas Chainsaw Massacre , the cult feels very reminiscent of the Manson family, and an argument could be made that some of the color schemes in the film are a nod to Dario Argento’s work.
Feeling like that awesome cosmic-horror VHS that you’ve just stumbled across on one of the lower shelves in the horror section, Mandy is akin to legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta drinking a litre of LSD, watching The Evil Dead and Hellraiser while listening to Obscured by Clouds by Pink Floyd, then painting an epic cosmic triptych.
A beautiful homage to the perpetually underrated Hellraiser, this death trio is the first to be annihilated in increasingly gruesome and hilarious ways which shall not be spoilt here.
That influence is certainly felt in Mandy: The demonic bike gang summoned to kidnap her recalls that film as well as Weird Science and Hellraiser, and Jeremiah’s “children” call to mind the vampiric family of Near Dark.
In due time, a ghostly gang of spiked, LSD-overdosed mutants from the set of Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" appears, ready to abduct Mandy and deliver her to Jeremiah.
But the pair fall foul of a deranged cult led by Linus Roach’s Manson-like leader, and their allies, a gang of psychotic, LSD-casualty bikers in spiky gimp gear seemingly modelled on Clive Barker’s Hellraiser .
And Nic Cage is more than game for all the frenzied derangement; he’s indisputably channeling Bruce Campbell from The Evil Dead, zoned out in a state of grisly crimson mania, absolutely soaked with blood and body parts.
Feeling like that awesome cosmic-horror VHS that you’ve just stumbled across on one of the lower shelves in the horror section, Mandy is akin to legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta drinking a litre of LSD, watching The Evil Dead and Hellraiser while listening to Obscured by Clouds by Pink Floyd, then painting an epic cosmic triptych.
Having expertly lured people in during this first half, Cosmatos then puts the pedal to the metal in the second half with a blood-soaked exercise in unhinged nuttiness that compares favorably to such giddy gore classics as “The Evil Dead” and “Re-Animator.”
Admittedly, Mandy is a bare-bones narrative essentially boiling down to revenge against a group of evangelical cultists and their summoned demonic biker gang associates, but writer and director Panos Cosmatos (alongside co-writer Aaron Stewart Ahn) imbues standard practices with heavy stylistic choices ranging from art-house horror sensibilities conjuring up the vibe of the set of an ’80s heavy metal music video, death sequences involving gallons upon gallons of fake blood and most certainly enough to make anyone that ever worked on The Evil Dead series smile with approval, scenery-chewing performances from everyone, especially the villains, comprised of lines that feel ripped out of the dark fantasy novels the titular Mandy reads or perhaps heavy metal reminiscent lyrics, and hypnotic visual trickery, specifically speaking a back-and-forth transformative image that had me questioning if I was going crazy and seeing things.
There are tinges of Dungeons and Dragons , The Evil Dead , Conan the Barbarian , and many more.
There are also strains of Heavy Metal (1981) via animated sequences, and nods to every Iron Maiden album cover ever.
Mandy (Grade: B) is a midnight-movie festival onto itself; over two gonzo hours, it combines giallo, Clive Barker, Death Wish , prog rock, heavy metal, Heavy Metal, Guy Maddin, Mad Max, the dueling-chainsaw climax of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Nicolas Roeg, and Nicolas Cage at his most bugging-out unhinged.
Animated sequences echo fantasy novel covers and the movie “Heavy Metal” in equal measure.
Cosmatos avoids aping the exploitation of women’s bodies that marks so much of the heavy metal (and Heavy Metal) to which he’s paying homage but Mandy’s death is an unfortunately textbook case of fridging.
I’m expecting fans of eighties fantasy like Heavy Metal (1981) to absolutely lose their minds over this film, but you don’t have to be a part of that fandom to appreciate the hypnotizing, psychedelic story and how impressively it is told.
Mandy is a hypnotic and thrilling freak-out that has us in its thrall from the opening credits, even when the director becomes a little too indulgent, if that’s possible in a psychedelic concoction that blends Heavy Metal magazine, Mad Max, Hellraiser, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Death Wish and The Evil Dead, pours it into a goblet and has Ken Russell present it to you with a Laudanum chaser.
Mandy (Grade: B) is a midnight-movie festival onto itself; over two gonzo hours, it combines giallo, Clive Barker, Death Wish , prog rock, heavy metal, Heavy Metal, Guy Maddin, Mad Max, the dueling-chainsaw climax of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Nicolas Roeg, and Nicolas Cage at his most bugging-out unhinged.
All too often, films like Death Wish and its ilk indulge our fear and our hatred — our deep, visceral, nihilistic need to destroy things.
Although there were plenty of reasons to hate the film—the clumsy and contrived nature of the screenplay, the shoddy and haphazard quality of the filmmaking and the utter waste of the immensely likable Jennifer Garner in the lead role among them—perhaps the worst thing about it, other than the startlingly level of racism on display in virtually every scene (including one in which Garner kills about 20 Hispanics in a piñata factory but leaves the sole white guy on hand alive to pass on some information), was how boring and pro forma it was—for all intents and purposes, it was little more than just another uninspired knockoff of “Death Wish” and we already had one of those earlier this year with that terrible Bruce Willis remake.
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Cosmatos goes for a direct reference, likely to two gnarly ’80s horror flicks: Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm II .
Mandy (Grade: B) is a midnight-movie festival onto itself; over two gonzo hours, it combines giallo, Clive Barker, Death Wish , prog rock, heavy metal, Heavy Metal, Guy Maddin, Mad Max, the dueling-chainsaw climax of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Nicolas Roeg, and Nicolas Cage at his most bugging-out unhinged.
Both of his films to date ( Beyond The Black Rainbow , the new Mandy) have been exercises in psychotronic drag-ass, best appreciated by a certain kind of movie freak—the devotees of the church of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Heavy Metal, in Mandy’s case.
What follows is what I can only describe as a film that feels like a project that would be born if Gregg Araki and Kenneth Anger co-directed “Mad Max.” There’s a creepy “phantasmagorical atmosphere” at play (Cosmatos’ own words) with a groovy late 70s / early 80s horror vibe, from the gritty cinematography by Benjamin Loeb right down to Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s synth-heavy original score.
Mandy (Grade: B) is a midnight-movie festival onto itself; over two gonzo hours, it combines giallo, Clive Barker, Death Wish , prog rock, heavy metal, Heavy Metal, Guy Maddin, Mad Max, the dueling-chainsaw climax of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Nicolas Roeg, and Nicolas Cage at his most bugging-out unhinged.
Beyond Cage at his inventively manic best, there’s an almost unrecognizable Riseborough hitting intriguingly odd notes as the offbeat love interest, while the members of Jeremiah’s warped posse are individualily perverse in ways that recall the “Mad Max” universe.
It’s not long before Brother Swan summons a “Mad Max”-like biker gang of leather-bound, nail-pierced, LSD-consuming, human-sacrifice-taking demons (akin to the Cenobites from the “Hellraiser” franchise), who kidnap Mandy to become a new pawn in Sand’s hellish sect.
Then it’s essentially “Mad Max” for the Iron Maiden set.
The rest of “Mandy” plays like the bastard child of “Mad Max” and “Repo Man” by way of Rob Zombie.
Like Guadagnino’s Suspiria, Mandy draws inspiration from Dario Argento– in this case, his use of neon colors, pummeling music, and scripts that don’t always make perfect sense– and like Suspiria it is the sprawling, ambitious work of a rising visionary.
Somewhere between Shelley Duvall in The Shining and Suspiria’s Jessica Harper, Riseborough is convincing enough to make Mandy’s killing feel emotional.
Finally, bridging astrology and rock ‘n roll, is a piece of dialogue inspired by Neil Young’s famous line from the 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps , later ending up as part of Kurt Cobain’s suicide letter: “It‘s better to burn out than to fade away.”
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Cosmatos has said one of his inspirations was the 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer, so Cage is his reckless, relentless knight.
Cosmatos goes for a direct reference, likely to two gnarly ’80s horror flicks: Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm II .