Tag: Nicolas Cage

Dream Scenario

Posted on by victorfraga

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Glancing over the past decade of Nicolas Cage’s extensive filmography one cannot help but be stunned by the glimmers of exceptional performances within the mire of otherwise below par straight-to-streaming movies. Examples such as Joe (David Gordon Green, 2013), Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018), Colour Out of Space (Richard Stanley, 2019), The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Tom Gormican, 2021), and Pig (Michael Sarnoski, 2021) are the standout performances from Cage’s past decade of film work. Yet, these five films sit within an expanse of 42 films that have been released from 2013 to 2023. Not good odds. In fact, those percentages would ordinarily knock any other actor out of the game for good, yet despite this Cage’s popularity is as strong as ever. His eccentric performances within even the most dreck of films is greeted with anticipation and appreciation. It’s rare these days, but it’s always a wicked delight to witness Cage on the theatrical screen. His presence, though diminishing somewhat with age and by the countless sup-par films, pulsates with movie-star quality that has vanished from many of his acting peers who began their careers in the same era.

Cage’s eccentric performances within even the most dreck of films is greeted with anticipation and appreciation. Never mind that the script is beyond shoddy, the direction a dud, or a narrative that simply sucks, Cage emerges victorious among his loyal fanbase who become feverish for the next entry. I’m an absolute sucker for Cage’s work and although above I have pulled out five prime examples of great work from the past ten years, I admit my love of Cage’s performances has meant me revisiting films such as Dog Eat Dog (Paul Schrader, 2016), Mom and Dad (Brian Taylor, 2018), and Prisoners of the Ghostland (Sion Sono, 2021) over again. And this is just the later works. Any new Cage film that lands on streaming is lapped up in an instant.

Dream Scenario, the third feature from Norwegian film director Kristoffer Borgli returns Cage back to the big screen and gives him his best critical reviews since Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002). The film concerns Paul Matthews, a tenured college biology professor with aspirations to write a book on the habits of ants who suddenly and inexplicably begins appearing in the dreams of people all over the world. At first, his presence within these dreams is as a bemused spectator, but eventually his presence becomes more intimidating and violent. His dream persona begins a campaign of murder, torture and rape against those who dream him.

His own reality falls apart as his fame becomes notorious. People he knows, including his own students, distance themselves from him and his dreamt-up atrocities. Unable to control the perception that people have, Paul teams up with a marketing start-up to try and turn his fortunes around and make his fame a more positive experience. Instead, the company guides him towards embracing the darker elements of his fame. Alongside Paul’s rise to fame is the pressures on his family and work colleagues. His wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) copes by throwing herself into her work (and possibly an affair with a co-worker), while his two daughters Sophie and Jessica (Lily Bird and Jessica Clement respectively) deal with the social pressures from their peers at school. Paul’s boss and co-workers try their best to accommodate his notoriety, but he is eventually laid off when it becomes clear his students can’t overcome the trauma of being sliced and diced up in their dreams.

After a few months, Paul fades out of peoples dreams, but his excursion leads to the creation of a new dream-traveling technology that allows a group of ‘dreaminfluencers’ to enter the subconsciousness of anyone and conduct product placements within the dream. Dream Scenario intention here seems to offer a message that dreams are the last refuge against the ever-increasing commodification of our lives. If they are intruded upon, we really do begin to lose ourselves. And loss is what eventually occurs. Paul, now separated from Janet, goes on a book tour of France (where oddly his violent dream behavior was enjoyed) to sell his autobiography Dream Scenario which has been translated to French as “Je Suis Un Cauchemar” (“I Am a Nightmare“, in free translation) with a frightening new cover that features Paul’s face looming in shadows. While in France, Paul uses the dream technology to enter Janet’s subconscious and try to reconcile with her there.

Cage playing the role of a now infamous personality mirrors his own journey. Once considered a serious-minded actor of relatively high-brow material, his later work in film matched with his outrageous personality and extravagant lifestyle has made him a kind of self-replicating internet meme whose acting craft is sidelined in favor of hammed-up performances and exaggerated tics. Whatever scene, or small moment that can be captured and taken out of context, adapted, and spread through the wires is the predominant outcome of Cage’s work. This is a shame as, for once, Dream Scenario offers Cage enough gravitas and nuances to show that he can summon great complexity when the material calls for it. He portrays Paul as a man being crushed under the weight of disappointment that life has delivered upon him. Cage gives Paul a heap of nervous physical and verbal tics that signal a life of compromise and giving way to the ambitions of others. He is a weak man who is suddenly given the opportunity to express influence and knowledge, but hasn’t got enough control of his situation to make it happen. Instead, circumstances run away from him and the perception of him overtakes his personality. It is evident that this perception over reality has also occurred to Cage himself. We have websites such as Nic Cage as Everyone, YouTube parody videos such as ‘Nicolas Cage’s Agent’, podcasts dissecting his film work, and countless memes and gifs that take his smiley face contortions out of context. Cage isn’t in control of any of this. It’s a product.

Dream Scenario isn’t perfect. The introduction of the dream-technology late into the narrative feels very tacked on and offers a Black Mirror-style (David Slade, 2018) technological reading of the film’s premise and a last-minute stab at social commentary and the commodification of dreams that seems forced and unnecessary to the personal trajectory the story takes. The dream device technology acts as a narrative device itself that allows Paul to access Janet’s dreams to attempt a reconciliation. It might have felt more satisfying and more real if she would have dreamt Paul up naturally all by herself. After all, Janet expresses concern that Paul never seems to appear in her own dreams so having him literally appear as the ‘man of her dreams’ would have been a fitting and uplifting conclusion. Instead, after placing much investment in Paul’s, the audiences are left not knowing if he’ll be okay in the end, or if the darkness of his dreamt actions will overtake his actual life.

While the bulk of the marketing has been focused on Cage’s performance, credit must also be given to Julianne Nicholson as Paul’s long suffering wife Janet, Dylan Gelula as Molly, a marketing assistant who attempts to make her erotic dreams about Paul come true, Michael Cera as Trent the aloof head of the marketing agency, and the film’s best kept secret, and Tim Meadows as Paul’s sympathetic boss. While Dream Scenario isn’t an ensemble piece as such, the presence of these actors elevates the film further and gives Cage plenty to bounce off of. Borgli’s direction and editing gives the film a fun and easygoing pace that only becomes cluttered and unsure of itself towards the conclusion.

Cage recently stated that his acting career is winding down with maybe four or five films left before retirement. This would be a great loss. Dream Scenario gives Cage an actual age-appropriate role that offers a whole new arena for his abilities. If he bails out within the next year or two a whole host of potential films could have seen Cage build upon his work here. After everything that has come before, the highs, the lows, the hits, the flops, the odd hair styles, the madness, and the brilliance, the next stage of Cage could be the most subtle and most interesting era. I guess we should dream that it happens.

Dream Scenario is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, December 8th.

Pig

Posted on by victorfraga

Robin Feld (Cage), a mysterious truffle hunter who lives in the Oregon wilderness with his beloved pig. He cuisines and sells his truffles to Amir (Alex Woolf), a sleazy agent of the Portland dining scene. After his pig is inexplicably taken from him Robin embarks on a pursuit into the city, with strange and emotional results.

Despite his grumpiness, Feld is a true hero – a man who would risk everything to save the titular animal. The people he meets in the city are fittingly opposite, drained of feeling and retro-fitted to serve monetary interests. Pig presents an emotionally engaging conflict: Feld is put in several situations where his humanity clashes with the robotic nature of his antagonists. Like a spiritual truthsayer, he uses his outsider status to hold a mirror to the other characters’ inadequacies. When walking through a dark, underground corridor he insists Amir not use his phone. “You’ll get used to it”, he says, in tune with the darkness.

In a stand-out scene, he helps remind a former-colleague-turned-top-chef of his lost dream to open a humble English pub, instantly exposing his current, fancier pretensions as meaningless. Feld reminds both him and the audience that “we don’t get a lot of things to love”, a message the rest of the film stresses with dexterity.

Pig touches in its portrayal of grief – it is a deeply felt story about characters who, through loss, have been robbed of feeling. Feld’s search for the pig becomes a means to simultaneously deal with the death of his own wife, which he has struggled to come to terms with. Similarly, Darius (Adam Arkin) is deeply affected by the tragic dynamic between himself, his dying wife and his son, Amir (Alex Woolf). The main characters are strangely linked through their losses, which then leads to a collective kind of mourning – they appear to have no reason to settle their difference, yet they find common ground through these unfortunate events. Sarnoski’s revenge set-up is a fairly boiler-plate one but his handling of these weighty themes elevates it beyond standard fare.

Pig’s marketing has largely centred around the appearance of Nicolas Cage in a more-grounded-than-usual role. His performance is surprisingly nuanced, yes, though fans of his manic style will be pleased to see that he has not lost his trademark showiness. At times, his grizzly, worn out demeanour teeters very finely on the line between comedy and drama, which is exacerbated by his occasionally excessive mumbling. Ultimately though, Cage’s performance deserves the praise it has received. His intense, physical portrayal conveys the most important message – we believe that Feld cares deeply for his pig, and by the end of the film we become nearly as invested as he is. We also understand that he is suffering greatly from other past tragedies without the plot needing to explain them in detail.

As was perhaps expected, Pig is a pretty odd affair. Initially, the film struggles to find tonal footing as it engages in its mash-up of western, drama and cuisine. Perhaps because of this oddball nature, it narrowly falls short of excellence. The restaurant scene with Chef Finway (David Knell) is somewhat hurt by Knell’s off-putting, hammy performance and the underground chef punch-up feels like a culinary parody of Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999).Still, as Pig moves along these disparate elements become charming. In some ways, Sarnoski has made the film that Chef (Jon Favreau, 2014) aspired to be – it certainly does a better job of articulating the importance of food to memory and livelihood. Its weirdness is initially difficult to engage with but it is eventually winning. It has the potential, like its star, to become a cult favourite.

Pig is a must see for fans of The Cage, but it more importantly transcends his presence by offering a nuanced and heartfelt portrayal of grief. Its a film that wants both its characters and audience to feel – and this it achieves.

Pig is available now on all major VoD platforms.

Our dirty questions to Panos Cosmatos

Posted on by victorfraga

Panos Cosmatos (pictured above) subverts low-brow genre film making by blending exploitation subject-matter and crafting it into beautiful, cinematic events of emotional, visual and sonic intensity. Carving out a new genre of film, Cosmatos draws from a global heritage of art and artefact, high and low, to tell stories that resonate, captivate and obfuscate with equal measures of sledge-hammer force and artful finesse.

His second feature film Mandy (after the 2008’s critically acclaimed Beyond the Black Rainbow) stars Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough and Linus Roache and is about set-fire to everything we thought we knew about cinema and story-telling. You can read our exclusive review of the film by clicking here, where Stephen Lee Naish compares Cosmatos to Lynch and Kubrick.

Lara C. Cory met with Panos Cosmatos as he travelled to London for his film premiere at the London Film Festival on October 11th. The film was launched in cinemas across the UK the following day. They talked about the origins of Mandy, why he took a decade between his two films, working with Nicolas Cage and unusual “paces”. Read on and find out more!

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Lara C. Cory – It’s been a long time since your first film Beyond the Black Rainbow in 2008. Do you remember the kernel of how Mandy began in your imagination and when you knew it would be your next film?

Panos Cosmatos – It was right when I was still writing Beyond the Black Rainbow [pictured below; all other images from Mandy], and looking back on it now I realise now it was sort of like an antidote to BBR which was all about suppressing my emotions and grief [Panos’s father, director George P. Cosmatos died aged just 64 in 2005]. Unconsciously, I think I needed to purge my grief in a volcanic eruption of feelings. I chose the revenge genre for its innate emotionality and operatic qualities.

LCC – You deliver such emotional depths in your films, in spite of the minimal dialogue and simplistic plots. In a cinematic landscape where so many fail on this level, how do you get it so right?

PC – I think because I’m morbidly fixated on the idea of simplicity in a weird way. It’s reactionary too, because when I was writing these films, the mid 2000s, films had become preoccupied with intricate plot lines. But they were only an illusion of complexity because emotionally and tonally they were not complex films. I wanted to do something simple; start with a simple story and build up a rich emotional, sonic and visual experience around that. To me, the story is fuel that drives the hot-rod. It doesn’t need to complicated to be interesting or powerful.

LCC – The pacing of your films is noticeably slower than most releases today. Can you talk about your decision to pace Mandy, in the first half anyway, as gently as you did?

PC – Beyond the Black Rainbow was deliberately slow because I was interested in the zone-out, hypnotic, trance-like quality of 35mm film. I wanted people to lose themselves in the film and not feel pushed forward the whole time. Mandy was a bit more propulsive, I think of Beyond the Black Rainbow as slow speed, and Mandy as medium speed. I wanted the audience to sink into this metaphorical lake of this reality, let them become comfortable so I could slowly tear it apart.

LCC – Not only Cage, Roache and Riseborough in Mandy, but Michael Rogers in Beyond the Black Rainbow have all delivered extraordinary work. How you manage to draw out such incredible performances from your actors?

PC – You have to trust the actors and give them room to breathe. When Linus came in he started doing his lines super-fast thinking it’s what I wanted. So, I told him to really slow down and he was a bit shocked but delighted that he could take his time. In modern film and TV there is high premium on constantly propelling things forward in a very artificial way. There’s something beautiful about letting an actor speak for a long time. To see the characters you’ve created come alive is really magical see and I too want to revel in it.

LCC – There seem to be little clues that signpost your favourite films and directors throughout Mandy. Who are some people and films that have influenced your style?

PC – The film maker that sparked it for me when I was making Beyond the Black Rainbow was French exploitation filmmaker Jean Rollin, who made these weird, ultra-slow art-house vampire films. That triggered something for me; I saw this blending of this extreme art-house technique with very low-brow exploitation subject matter. For Beyond the Black Rainbow the DP and I drew on a lot of very specific frames and references from other films to create the colour palettes and textures, but for Mandy I felt more confident to draw on my own experiences. A lot of the colours and tones come from moments in my life, for example, sitting on the roof of the car and seeing the smoke illuminated by the tail-lights in the rear-view mirror, and growing up in the pacific northwest and how that looks and feels, especially at night.

I’ve always loved villains that are perverse ego maniacs. And definitely Frank Booth [from David Lynch’s 1986 Blue Velvet] and the films of Stuart Gordon have these villains that are these delusional ego maniacs. I like that as a starting point. These people who are kind of pathetic more than they are scary, and when their self-image is threatened that’s when they become scary.

LCC – Both Mandy and Beyond the Black Rainbow are set in 1983 – why?

PC – I was delving into the things that meant a lot to me as a kid, and, I guess I see that year as signifier of a mythical imaginary reality. Before my dad died I rejected the 1980s as ridiculous. I stopped watching genre films and was more interested in French new wave and foreign films, it was fresh to me. But after dad died, I realised that these low-brow genre films were equally important to me and spoke to me in an equally powerful way. I wanted to merge them together.

LCC – You’ve said that music plays a big part in your creative processes. Can you tell me a bit about the sound palette you used during the making of Mandy?

PC – It’s all over the map in a way. I usually compile a playlist for each project which I then have to whittle down when it gets out of control. Often, I’m searching for the opening title sequence track and it takes me a lot of time trying to find the right one. I spent years looking for the title track for Mandy and out of the blue one day, my wife started playing me Starless by King Crimson, her dad was a big fan. The second I heard it I knew I’d found the right one, finally. The playlist I had by the time I spoke to Johann was stuff like Van Halen’s Sunday Afternoon in the Park, the Flash Gordon soundtrack, and this gentle, almost Spanish guitar instrumental by Black Sabbath called Laguna Sunrise which in my head, was Mandy’s theme.

LCC – Knowing the sort of the music Johann was known for, it must have been a bit of risk getting him on board considering the style of Mandy. Do you remember what it was like when you heard his first submissions?

PC – Yeah, it can be a bit nerve-racking to hear that first piece of music but I’ve been lucky so far with both Sinoia Caves and Johann. I didn’t think he’d want to work with me. I think of his work as very austere, but after talking with him I realised he grew up as an Icelandic metalhead and we had a lot of the same touchstones growing up. I immediately connected with him, in a weird way he kind of reminded me of my father growing up. He was gruff but very open. When I showed him the playlist he responded to everything on it and really liked the idea that this would be the starting point. We didn’t want to ape it, we wanted to interpret the songs via the film. It was like Christmas getting the first tracks from him. I feel like we only started to scratch the surface of what we could’ve done.

LCC – Do you think you’ll leave plenty of room before your next film, or have you got something lined up that you want or have already started on?

PC – I don’t what I’m gonna do. Hang out with the cat for a while.

LCC – Was there any reason you called her Mandy?

PC – Because of the Barry Manilow song. I absolutely love it!

Mandy

Posted on by victorfraga

WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Around half way through Mandy, the sophomore feature film from visionary Italian-Canadian director Panos Cosmatos, the reclusive Caruthers (Bill Duke) explains to vengeful Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) that the people he intends to hunt down and kill for brutally murdering his girlfriend have had their minds warped and twisted by some powerful LSD. There is no humanity in these sick souls. One might be thinking that as this scene plays out and Caruthers gives us the only tidbit of expedition the film offers that the ticket purchased from the kiosk to watch Mandy has also been laced with some bad acid.

Mandy exists as a headfuck, a hallucinatory trip, but it’s one worth taking and experiencing in all its lucid glory. The action takes place in 1983 in the Pacific Northwest of America that seems devoid of people, at least normal people. But we know this is no alternate reality, however much Mandy believes in the supernatural or the otherworldly. President Ronald Reagan appears on the radio rallying against drugs and pornography. If Mandy had been released at the time of Reagan, the moral majority would have flipped at its bent vision of religion and God. Still, the woods, mountains, and lakes are bathed in a fog of dreamy light and aura that offers a sense that weirdness is a norm in these parts.

Red and his girlfriend Mandy Bloom (a bewitching Andrea Riseborough) live in a rural retreat, a secluded cabin by Crystal Lake. Red works as a lumberjack whilst Mandy mostly hangs around the house drawing and reading wild novels of fantasy and as we later learn works in a local roadside store. Mandy is a doomed character. She seems to sense this and carries the knowledge that she will suffer an inevitable gruesome death with her. A scar under her eye hangs like a permanent streak from a lifetime of cried tears. A freakish cult, known as the Children of the New Dawn travels though the wilderness and when their alluring leader Jeremiah Sand (played to wicked and perverted perfection by Linus Roache) spots Mandy on the roadside he becomes instantly intrigued by her. He orders his minions to kidnap and bring her before him to be initiated within the cult as a servant and witness to his greatness.

Up to this point the film has unfolded in a slow and delicate pace. Conversations between characters have hung in the air and attributed nothing to the direction of the narrative accept to act as backdrops for the film’s genuinely gorgeous use of colour and cinematography. But the summoning of a weird convert of mutated bikers – think Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987) on wheels – by the cult’s henchmen to kidnap Mandy and dish out a beating to Red begins the film’s ascent towards its weirdo high. Mandy is brought before Jeremiah whom. He plays a folky recording of his own making to her Manson-esque fashion. It turns out Jeremiah was once a promising singer/songwriter. Anything sound familiar?

Although succumbing to the bad acid (and an odd wasp sting) that she is given by the converts, Mandy laughs in his face (and at his flaccid penis) and rejects his cult and his sexual advances. Jeremiah runs out of the room humiliated. Instead of further urging, the cult decide to burn Mandy alive and in front of a chained up Red. The scene is genuinely disturbing as the bagged up body of Mandy sways and writhes as the flames take hold as Red looks on. As the cult members leave Red is left to die chained up and gagged. Red frees himself by allowing the wire’s to cut into his wrists and once he crawls back to the house he stares at the television as a creepy commercial for Goblin Macaroni and Cheese plays. His life has fallen apart yet he still can’t pull away from a good commercial spot.

He then necks a bottle of vodka he finds in the bathroom and pours it over his wounds to stifle and cleanse the bleeding wounds. His soul however is shattered beyond repair.

This scene in the bathroom is a hard watch, though not for the reasons you might think. Shot from a single camera and a fixed wide shot, we watch in gruesome voyeuristic detail as Red moves from sobbing to shouting to screaming and back in only a matter of seconds. The scene is fraught with emotion, yet this scene is also played out with Cage wearing a tiger emblazoned t-shirt and a pair of soiled tighty whites. Any other actor might have found the nexus of emotion and seriousness in the characters situation to play it straight, but with Cage as Red it is played out with delirious lunacy.

We enter in the half of the film in which Red seeks revenge on those that have wronged him. He locates an old friend, the aforementioned Caruthers, who loads him up with a crossbow and an assortment of swords and blades.

Unlike the ethereal first half of the film that moves at a snail’s pace, the last half shifts briskly and features some bloody horror tropes that are reminiscent of the Hellraiser franchise and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, especially the chainsaw dual between Red and a Children of the New Dawn thug which pulls heavily from Army of Darkness (1992) and of course Dennis Hopper’s maniac avenger in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Tobe Hooper, 1986). Red is victorious and his revenge against Jeremiah is complete when he tracks the leader down to his church and crushes his skull with his bare hands. With his mission over Red imagines his Mandy sitting beside him as he drives away from the horror. The maniacal grin on Red’s blood soaked face indicates that his mind has fully gone to the dogs.

Mandy is a blood soaked revenge caper, but its exquisite palette of colour and trippy use of lens flare takes it far beyond the b-movie shock horror it might have become. Lens flare, also known as panaflares refers to the process of aiming small LED lights into the barrel of the lens, The aesthetic is truly pleasing and immersive, conjuring a kind of hypnosis that draws the viewer in slowy and subtly. The trashing violence and destabilising, sometimes comedic performance from Cage shocks the viewer out of the fever dream for a moment, but the pauses of calm bring you back in easily.

Nonetheless, there is an otherworldly quality to the film that grounds it in the weird sci-fi novels that Mandy reads and the Heavy Metal genre and Dungeon and Dragons influences that bestow the film. Reviewers have commented on the idea that the film is akin to an Iron Maiden record sleeve coming to life. I’d like to picture something more modern such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s recent concept records coming to life. King Crimson’s beautiful Starless opens the film as well as a title card of the last statement from death row inmate Douglas Roberts: “When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head and rock and roll me when I’m dead.”

The mutant biker gang might’ve added to this supernatural quality. When they are first summoned to do the dirty work of the cult they arrive in a red mist of dew and exhaust fumes. They appear to be from another dimension. When Red sets out on his killing spree he invades the gang’s domain. Except their domain is an abandoned house with discarded takeaway boxes and beer bottles littering the floors and tables. One gang member sits admiring the rhythms of seventies soft-core pornography. The bikers are clearly human, but so perverse and drug addled that the form no longer seems familiar. Their biker leathers seem fused to their skin. They are an odd bunch.

Speaking of odd, let’s take a moment to appreciate Nicolas Cage. His performance has been described as “wild” and “feral” and “overblown”. This is a fair assessment. Cage employs his most riotous tendencies here. We’ve seen only glimpses of this madness in films such as Drive Angry (Patrick Lussier, 2011), The Wicker Man (Neil Labute, 2006), and most recently in the comedy horror Mom and Dad (Brian taylor, 2017) and Paul Schrader’s gonzo Dog Eat Dog (2016), but in Mandy we see it come to fruition and it’s glorious. Cage is wrathful and yet incorporates intricate moments of subtle humour to elevate the insanity. Take for example the moment Red brutally dispatches a member of the mutant biker gang. He slashes away at his enemy and after coming out victorious, scoops a wad of cocaine up in his hand and gleefully snorts the lot. The performance is pure gonzo theatrics. Does it steal the film away from his co-stars and the importance of the narrative? Yes, no, and maybe.

It is also worth noting that Red actually has very few lines of dialogue. His conversations with Mandy mostly has him sleepily responding, whilst the conveying of emotion and his hack and slash revenge trip is mostly a bunch of hoots, groans, laughs, and cries. He’s given a few off kilter one-liners (“You ripped my favourite shirt!”) and any monologue (“Only one I believe”) is a stunted and jilted mess of incoherence.

There is another character in the film that you won’t find in the casting credits: the soundtrack. The last film score entry in composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s incredible discography is a fitting, though sad end to a career that placed the soundtrack back in its rightful place as a vital component of a films aura. The music used in Mandy is a symphony of simmering ethereal synth and booming, decaying electric guitar. It literally shakes the screen. It’s a masterpiece that plays brilliantly by itself, yet take it away from the film and suddenly Mandy loses its unearthly quality. The soundtrack is a solid movement that pushes and prods the emotion within the film. If not accompanied by the film, it’s best experienced alone and in absolute darkness with a decent set of headphones.

Mandy is a very dirty and highly effective movie due to many factors: Cage’s performance, the outstanding soundtrack, the eeriness and dread of the first half, and the rage and madness of the second half. Yet as a whole it clearly belongs to director Panos Cosmatos. Cosmatos has created a vision that, while inspired by grimy VHS nastiness and late night sci-fi oddities, is truly singular. Cosmatos’s masterful approach aligns him with Kubrick and Lynch in delivering perfectly believable and fully realised worlds and characters that operate within their own laws of physics.

Mandy shows as part of the BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 10th and 21st – click here for our top 10 dirty picks from the event. It’s out in cinemas on Friday, October 12th. Out on DVD, Blu-ray and VoD on Monday, October 29th.