Mandy (2018) [Blu-ray]
Action | Horror | Thriller

Pacific Northwest. 1983 AD. Outsiders Red Miller and Mandy Bloom lead a loving and peaceful existence. When their pine-scented haven is savagely destroyed by a cult led by the sadistic Jeremiah Sand, Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire.

Storyline: Taking place in 1983, Red is a lumberjack who lives in a secluded cabin in the woods. His artist girlfriend Mandy spends her days reading fantasy paperbacks. Then one day, she catches the eye of a crazed cult leader, who conjures a group of motorcycle-riding demons to kidnap her. Red, armed with a crossbow and custom Axe, stops at nothing to get her back, leaving a bloody, brutal pile of bodies in his wake. Written by texasboyy

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben, October 31, 2018 If the title of this review isn't familiar, it's a variation on a line from a Barry Manilow power ballad of the Seventies. That song is one of the few sources that writer/director Panos Kosmatos hasn't ransacked for his latest film, which stars Nicolas Cage in his ongoing effort to pay off his debts to the IRS. Kosmatos, son of George (Rambo: First Blood, Part II), established his deranged packrat approach to filmmaking with Beyond the Black Rainbow, of which my former colleague, Casey Broadwater, aptly observed that "the film just doesn't have the substance to match Cosmatos' keen sense of style". As it was then, so it remains now.

Mandy is Mandy Bloom (the estimable Andrea Riseborough, horribly misused), long-time live-in partner of Red Miller (Cage), a logger somewhere in the Pacific Northwest in 1983. By day, Mandy works as a cashier at a gas station, and in her off-hours she draws fantastical visions that Red admires and that are inspired by her love of heavy metal (she routinely wears Black Sabbath and Mötley Crüe t-shirts). There are hints of a troubled past, with Mandy's inward damage reflected in a kind of facial scarring that looks like a network of varicose veins descending from her left eye. It is no doubt her wounded quality that catches the attention of Jeremiah (Linus Roache), an indolently charismatic cult leader whose van carting his followers passes Mandy one day as she walks home from work. Jeremiah decides that Mandy must be his next bride and directs his followers to summon the Black Skulls, a species of biker-gang-from-hell, to kidnap her.

The Black Skulls are perhaps the clearest early sign that Mandy has lurched into the Twilight Zone (and not in a good way). They resemble nothing so much as the demons from the Hellraiser series, and they're summoned by the sound of a mystical horn, although they're apparently meant to be humans who have somehow been transformed by a specialized concoction of LSD. Why the Black Skulls are willing to do Jeremiah's bidding with such restraint, instead of simply tearing Red and Mandy limb from limb, remains a mystery, since their manic behavior closely resembles that of the Reavers in Firefly (another on the long list of sources that Kosmatos has plundered). But the gang captures Mandy and Red in their remote cabin, where Mandy rejects Jeremiah's advances, even though she's been thoroughly drugged. The scene in which Jeremiah offers himself is a signature example of Kosmatos' trippy style, as a closeup on Jeremiah's talking face morphs back and forth between his features and Mandy's. It's a clever effect, but its impact is more technological than emotional. It screams for attention even louder than any of the crazy characters. The same goes for many of the film's stylistic flourishes, including the random anime inserts. (Come to think of it, Mandy probably would have been more convincing if it had been done entirely in anime.)

Strip away the layers of genre self-indulgence, and Mandy is little more than a backwoods Death Wish with a lumberjack turned vigilante by a home invasion. (There's also a liberal dose of the writer and his wife tormented by Little Alex in A Clockwork Orange; Cosmatos clearly idolizes Kubrick.) The director liberally piles on enough psychedelia, splatter effects and torture porn suffering for an entire trilogy, and he has his actors chewing the scenery beyond even the usual Nic Cage self-indulgence (and Cage's isn't even the wildest performance in the film).

After Red has been transformed by Jeremiah's attack, he acquires not only determination but superpowers. The cult ceremonially stabs him, so that he can feel his life ebbing away while he watches the horrors being visited upon Mandy—a nasty device lifted from Law Abiding Citizen, a far superior Death Wish knock-off. But the hero of that film took months to regain his physical strength, whereas Red manages to break free and heal his vital organs by pouring vodka on the wound, which miraculously knits both inside and out. Then he performs one demanding physical task after another—including surviving a car wreck that should have killed him—with little more than a limp as a reminder of his injuries. Mandy is that kind of film, constantly jumping from one ridiculous development to the next, while it tries to distract you with blurry images and gross-out distractions from giant centipedes to gushers of vomited blood to the length of a villain's chainsaw. And all it has to offer for a resolution is flame and more hallucinations (assuming, of course, you haven't tuned out by then, which I predict will be many viewers' reaction, should they have the misfortune to be lured in).

It says a lot about the industrially processed pablum being routinely dispensed by the major studios today that a deeply flawed but flavorful concoction like Mandy has been so widely praised (including, I must note in fairness, by my colleagues Brian Orndorf and Josh Katz, whose opinions I respect). But just because something is refreshingly different doesn't make it good, and Mandy is awful. If blood, nonsense and headache-inducing lighting are your idea of a good time, by all means acquire it. When the novelty wears off, you'll have nothing left but shiny cinematic sludge. If you want to experience a more inventive and entertaining blend of horror, heavy metal, deadly romance and, yes, anime, try Deathgasm. It's humorous by design, whereas Mandy actually expects to be taken seriously.

[CSW] -0.5- Enter the psychedelic drug use of the 1960s thrown into the here and now. It really didn't work then and although a bit entertaining when mixed with horror it still doesn't work. If you enjoy a bad trip while still safely not on a psychedelic drug you will probably like this film. The psychedelic drugs produced hallucinations, which they did, and apparent expansion of consciousness which, if it did happen, didn't remain in effect after the drug wore off. So if you are stoned you may find this movie exciting or terrifying. If you are not you are most likely to find it a two hour waste of time like I did.
[V4.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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