2018 saw the release of two incredibly lurid and experimental acid-trip horror movies: Argentinian filmmaker Gaspar Noé’s Climax (2018) and Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy. I absolutely adored the former and walked away from the latter feeling like I’d just wasted two hours of my time.
Mandy is lauded as one of the most uncompromisingly unique films of the year with spellbinding cinematography and a Nicolas Cage performance dialed up to maximum levels of unhinged bit-committing. While I agree with all three of these points, I still strongly dislike the film. It felt disjointed, poorly paced, and inaptly named. The most glaring issue I kept coming back to was the fact that, despite its name, this movie is ostensibly not about Mandy.
And to me, that’s a problem because Mandy is far more interesting than Nic Cage’s character, Red, whom we primarily follow for the majority of the film.
What this film is about
Up until Mandy’s death I was fully absorbed in the dark, kaleidoscopic world Cosmatos was laying out for us. It begins in the Shadow Mountains in 1983, where we see Red and Mandy trying to kick the ennui looming large over their heads. Each one is haunted by their past (Red is a lumberjack with PTSD and Mandy still has flashbacks to the abuse she suffered as a child), but their humdrum existence is shattered when the leader of a satanic cult, Jeremiah Sand, rolls into town and becomes instantly infatuated with her. His disciple brother’s biker gang (known as the Black Skulls) kidnap, drug, and later burn Mandy at the stake, spurring Red into a bloodthirsty, revenge-fueled rampage. Ill-prepared for a battle against a cadre of strung out leatherhead maniacs, he forges his own weapons from scratch and seeks counsel from the chemist, portrayed by Richard Brake, who made the Black Skulls’ LSD.
What ensues is an exhaustive, off-the-wall, hour-long montage of stabbing, slashing, howling, screaming, bleeding, and every other violent verb you can think of. It carries the same sort of rapid-fire pulse movies like Kill Bill or Hard Boiled are known for — and by the time the credits rolled I felt like I’d just served a tour in Vietnam. What Cosmatos does here is impressive, and I admire his ability to keep my heart rate above 100 bpm for so long, but Red’s revenge arc feels like it belongs to an entirely different film when you compare it to the first thirty minutes.
The beauty of the first thirty minutes
What sucked me in about Mandy initially was its slow, hypnotic pacing and subsequent ability to let the eye wander throughout each scene. Much like in Panos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow, the aesthetic becomes a character in itself. The weighted, protracted looks exchanged between Mandy and the cult leader built up a squirmy type of tension, and the camera had no problem lingering on these exchanges to the point of uncomfortability.
Magenta is also a dominant color throughout the film, giving every scene a unique “dark room” type of sheen. And when Mandy, wonderfully played by Andrea Riseborough, is drugged and the acid kicks in, we quite literally go on a trip with her. Everything becomes nauseating and fragmented, words untether themselves from the mouths used to make them, and the world slows down to a near-halt. I loved this part because of how immersive it was, and would’ve been more than content to have the psychedelic vibe carry on for the rest of the film. But alas, Mandy dies and the movie kicks into overdrive — far too abruptly and far too fast. Ultimately, it feels like two separate ideas stitched together, exacerbated by the fact that Mandy is framed as the movie’s primary focus and established “main character” until Red takes over.
And when Mandy dies, the surrealistic visuals die along with her. Without any more extended drug sequences, the cinematography becomes less experimental and more Marvel-esque, which isn’t inherently a bad thing. I think I was just expecting this film to be similar to Climax in the sense that the audience feels trapped in a bad acid trip from start to finish because that’s what it sets itself up to be.
Why Mandy should have been about Mandy
Circling back to my earlier point, the eponymous title character being killed off less than halfway through the film really left a sour taste in my mouth. I wanted this movie to be about Mandy — the idol-worshipper/master-slave relationship she has with Jeremiah Sand is infinitely more interesting than a bloody revenge plot; we’ve seen that trope done countless times (to varying degrees of success) since the dawn of storytelling time.
For as phenomenal of an actor Nic Cage is in this movie, Red is very one-noted; his personality is entirely dependent on his motive to avenge his girlfriend. Yes, I want him to succeed, but only because he’s the “good guy”; I really know nothing about him other than his motivations. And after a while the fight scenes become mere spectacle, especially as the final few threads of realism disintegrate (not that this movie was realistic in the first place, but still).
Some of the stunts are so outlandish that they verge into comedic territory; they harken back to those type of campy, shock-horror slashers that ran rampant in the 1980s (think Intruder or Chopping Mall). At one point Red is attacked by two men wielding chainsaws like swords — which isn’t a far cry from a serial killer shredding a guitar with a giant drill-bit neck (as seen in the Slumber Party Massacre II). The sheer outlandish, unfettered epic-for-epic’s-sake mentality that Mandy takes on demands respect even if I personally wasn’t on board for it.
Mandy – a film for someone, just not me
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the ambition of this film and its ability to set itself apart in a genre saturated in tropes (like the concept of a “final girl”) and predictability. Although Cosmastos and I were clearly on two different wavelengths, I can’t deny that I’ve never seen another movie quite like Mandy, and its creativity should be celebrated. But don’t let my (admittedly) critical review deter you from checking it out for yourself; it’s received heaping amounts of praise from other horror lovers. However, if you do end up giving Mandy a go, I highly recommend following it up with Climax for the ultimate miasmic viewing experience.