Mandy

Nico­las Cage is scream­ing. His face is con­tort­ed into a grotesque, Edvard Munch-adja­cent por­trait of soul-deep pain and anger, so potent that if you close for your eyes for a moment, you might be able to taste the bit­ter metal­lic tang of the blood streaked across his cheeks and mat­ted in his hair. It’s this full-bod­ied com­mit­ment to his craft which has made Cage an endur­ing pres­ence in Hol­ly­wood for some three decades.

His per­for­mance as Red Miller in Panos Cos­matos’ cos­mic revenge romp Mandy is a tes­ta­ment to this resilience, but also tran­scends Cage’s whirling mani­a­cal trade­mark per­for­mance style to become a dif­fer­ent sort of beast.

It’s 1983 in the Mojave Desert’s Shad­ow Moun­tains. Red lives a peace­ful life with his part­ner Mandy (Andrea Rise­bor­ough) near Crys­tal Lake. They while away the hours qui­et­ly, until strange dreams start to plague them, fore­shad­ow­ing some­thing wicked head­ing their way. When the leader of a vio­lent reli­gious cult takes an inter­est in Mandy, their rur­al idyll is shat­tered, turn­ing a wood­land rever­ie into a blood-soaked vision of Hell on Earth. The apt­ly named Red swears revenge on those who have wronged him, includ­ing the cult’s bik­er min­ions, who look like they’ve just walked off the set of an Iron Maid­en album cov­er shoot.

Despite its fair­ly lin­ear revenge movie plot, Cos­matos’ twist­ed fairy tale – steeped in heavy met­al iconog­ra­phy – is quite unlike any­thing else you’re like­ly to see at the cin­e­ma this year. Once the action starts, there’s no let-up, no respite. With a hefty dose of ultra­vi­o­lence in the form of mind-bog­gling set-pieces involv­ing bat­tleax­es and chain­saws, Mandy has the same styl­is­tic look and feel as Craig S Zahler’s recent gore-fests Bone Tom­a­hawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, but the­mat­i­cal­ly it’s clos­er to a mood­i­er, LSD-trip­ping cousin of David Lynch or Jim Jarmusch.

The ethe­re­al visu­al atmos­phere sees grainy shots bleed into one anoth­er like a reel of film exposed for too long, and shift­ing red-blue-pur­ple light­ing brings to mind the chem­i­cal headache of hours spent in a dark­room. Else­where, the late, great Jóhann Jóhannsson’s brood­ing score – vast­ly dif­fer­ent from any of his oth­er work – pro­vides a stark reminder of just what a tragedy his loss is for the film world. This, cou­pled with King Crimson’s remark­able track ​‘Star­less’ from their 1974 album ​‘Red’, cre­ates an unfor­get­table acid-trip sound­scape that bores into your skull.

When one char­ac­ter remarks to Red, ​“You exude a cos­mic dark­ness,” he isn’t lying. Cage’s full-tilt per­for­mance sees him snort cocaine from a large shard of bro­ken glass and light a cig­a­rette off a decap­i­tat­ed skull, but in ful­ly invest­ing us in Red and Mandy’s rela­tion­ship from the off, Cos­matos mar­ries Cage’s knack for mania with his often under-utilised abil­i­ty to be thought­ful and restrained.

It’s not so much Peak Cage as Prime Cage. Even those who can’t get on board with the film’s jar­ring bru­tal­i­ty will be hard-pressed to fault Cos­matos’ sin­gu­lar vision – or the incred­i­ble sight of Cage hand-forg­ing a weapon he chris­tens ​‘The Beast’. An unabashed and com­pelling case for the beau­ty of genre cin­e­ma, Mandy will con­tin­ue to haunt you with its curi­ous black­ness even when the swirling, wak­ing night­mare is over.