Panos Cosmatos will drag us back into insanity… | Little White Lies

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Panos Cos­matos will drag us back into insan­i­ty with his next film Nekrokosm

24 Mar 2022

Words by Charles Bramesco

Two men shaking hands in a dark, shadowy setting.
Two men shaking hands in a dark, shadowy setting.
A24 will pro­duce the sci-fi fan­ta­sy set with­in a strange galaxy” where a hos­tile force threat­ens two lovers.

For those of us who approach cin­e­ma pri­mar­i­ly as a means of putting as much dis­tance between our­selves as real­i­ty as pos­si­ble, the films of Panos Cos­matos are a pre­cious rar­i­ty. Few film­mak­ers can con­jure the essence of the sur­re­al with the com­mit­ment and total­i­ty of the Cana­di­an genre mas­ter, whose dark fan­tasias such as Mandy and Beyond the Black Rain­bow plunge us into hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry alter­nate dimen­sions or nether­worlds hid­ing with­in our own. The next head trip might not be so far off.

This after­noon, the Hol­ly­wood Reporter broke the news that Cos­matos has chart­ed a course to insan­i­ty once again, set­ting up his next film Nekrokosm with A24. For those wor­ried that our reli­able mad­man had for what­ev­er rea­son gone on the straight and nar­row, take solace — the bare-bones teas­er for the premise does indeed include the word phan­tas­magor­i­cal.”

The log­line itself has yet to be divulged, but Cos­matos has offered the vagary that the film is set deep with­in a strange galaxy where two lovers are torn apart as they try to sur­vive a malev­o­lent inva­sion.” Those sober enough to form mem­o­ries of his last fea­ture Mandy will recall that the plot fol­lowed a rather sim­i­lar tem­plate, as demon­ic bik­ers drove a vio­lent wedge between met­al­head para­mours Nico­las Cage and Andrea Rise­bor­ough.

What direc­tion Cos­matos will take that prompt in this time around is anyone’s guess, but styl­is­ti­cal­ly, there are a few things we can safe­ly expect: high-grain film­strip pho­tog­ra­phy, hyper-sat­u­rat­ed reds and magen­tas, prob­a­bly a dash of flesh-rend­ing hor­ror. Tap­ping a star like Cage for his last film could hint at fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tions with A‑list tal­ent, after stick­ing with Cana­di­an actors for his debut.

But ulti­mate­ly, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of pre­dict­ing what won­drous ter­rors a Cos­matos film could hold is all part of the enjoy­ment. Best to sit back and let the unhinged for­mal­ism wash over you — per­haps, hope­ful­ly, on next year’s fes­ti­val circuit.

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