This might just be Nicolas Cage‘s Army of Darkness. Welcome to the beautiful, horrifying world of Mandy, director Panos Cosmatos’ vision that looks like a cross between Hellraiser, Evil Dead, Mad Max, and Drive.
The movie takes place in the pacific northwest in 1983. Red Miller (Cage) and Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) are outsiders, leading a hippified life of love and peace. When their home in the woods is obliterated by a nightmarish cult led by the vile Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), Red is “catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire.” They had me at phantasmagoric.
It sounds like a recipe for an amusing Nic Cage straight-to-streaming B-movie, but early reviews are stunningly positive. Reviewers praise Cage’s unhinged performance, Cosmatos’s apocalyptic visuals, the film’s drug-addled atmosphere, and the hypnotic violence. And there’s a chainsaw battle. Perhaps I should have led with the chainsaw battle.
Behold the glory of the below trailer. Mandy bloodies up theaters on September 14.
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