Mandy (2018)

Mandy is a movie that I would probably need to watch a second time to figure out just how I feel about it, but it has a specificity of authorial vision I just can't dismiss. It's a pastiche of the existential horrors of 1980's suburban parents, biker gangs, drugs, sex, cults, Satanism, fantasy novel cover art. Set in the Pacific Northwest of 1983 Nicolas Cage is a logger who lives peacefully with his new age artist girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) in a pretty nice cabin in the woods. Peacefully until a cult, with the aid of a drugged up, undead gang of bikers intrude into that peace, forever shattering it. This movie is really two movies, the first half is a slow build to the incident at the cabin in the woods, the second half a wild ride of revenge where Cage, who spends the first half of the film largely subdued, goes totally coked out, at one point literally. It's a puzzler, but the tone of unease and hyper-reality that runs through it transcends mere gimmick. I'm not sure exactly what director Panos Cosmatos was trying to say, but it's certainly intriguing. ***