The GIF-giving action hero fights demonic bikers with axes and chainsaws in supernatural thriller ‘Mandy,’ which premiered at Sundance.
Spoiler alert! Contains some spoilers for Mandy, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and has not yet been picked up for distribution.
PARK CITY, Utah – If you’ve ever wondered why Nicolas Cage is Hollywood’s most meme-able leading man, look no further than the totally insane Mandy .
The action star was on hand for the premiere of his latest blood-soaked, bonkers thriller at the Sundance Film Festival early Saturday morning, where the vocal midnight-screening crowd was equal parts captivated and confused by the psychedelic fever dream that played out on screen.
For the uninitiated, Mandy is the second feature from filmmaker Panos Cosmatos, whose 2010 debut, Beyond the Black Rainbow, was similarly infused with heavy metal and sci-fi influences.
In Mandy, set in 1983, Cage plays a stoic logger named Red Miller, who lives in a remote wilderness dwelling with his misfit illustrator wife, Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). But when an eerie religious sect known as the Black Skulls wreaks havoc on their quiet existence and slaughters his titular soulmate, Red sets off on a murderous mission for revenge.
Now, before you say “Sign me up!” and stop reading, a fair warning: It takes a full 1 hour and 5 minutes for Mandy to bite the dust, and an additional 10 minutes for Red to even take a shot at some of his wife’s killers: a demonic biker gang summoned by the Black Skulls, who have metal claws, orc-like features, and an insatiable thirst for LSD. (Just go with it.)
In fact, the first half of the movie is a mostly plotless, sepia-tone slog, whose copious scenes of tree-chopping, pillow talk and creepy cult rituals inspired a handful of walkouts among festival-goers at the Library Center Theatre.
But those impatient few may never know what they missed in those glorious last 40 minutes of Mandy — a deliciously disturbing display of Cage butchering bad guys in all manner of gross-out ways. A few of the most memorable:
Hitting the stage for a post-screening Q&A around 2:15 a.m., Cage said the grisly showdown with the chainsaws was his favorite scene to shoot.
His sparring partner was “twice my size, so that’s pretty intimidating,” Cage deadpanned, earning laughs. “We had about three weeks of (rehearsal). I was still recovering from a broken leg and almost couldn’t do the movie, but we all practiced together and somehow my leg healed; through all the stunt rehearsals, it got stronger and stronger. So I’m glad I made the movie as well, for that reason.”
