Film Review: Mandy — Panos Cosmatos (2018)

Take Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, spike it with LSD, and replace Ryan Gosling with Nicholas Cage who cycles between excruciating pain, burning anger, and blissful revenge. This film is not much in terms of substance — but its got helluva style.

Nicholas Cage is a lumber jack in the American Pacific sometime in the 80’s, living an idyllic existence, until a group of freaky Manson-like cult hippies roll along in their Winnebago and turn it into a nightmare.

But what a treat this nightmare is… not only does Nicholas Cage give us his best performance since Bad Lieutenant but the film is a visual and musical feast that you really need to see to believe, check out the trailer below.

Mandy is director Panos Cosmatos’s second feature, but if you want to get a better idea of his visual style and what to expect with Mandy, check out the trailer for his first feature Beyond the Black Rainbow (2012).

Basically he loves stories set in the 80s with psychedelic visuals, electronic synth music and all sorts of other paraphernalia that go well with those (think prisms, hippies, fantasy art, heavy metal).

Finally a big shout out needs to be given to the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson who scored the soundtrack and gave the film a large part of its magic, but sadly who also passed away during its production.

His work will forever be immortalised for the award winning work he did with Denis Villeneuve on Arrival, Blade Runner, Sicario, but I think the score he did on this film is something special.

Check out his full soundtrack here.

Anyways definitely check this one out on the silver screen while its playing this week!

Casual viewer / Film buff rating [B+]