Spoiler: This review does not serve any purpose.
Nicolas Cage has made the most
interesting movies of his career over the last ten years. I didn’t say good, mind you, although there have been
quite a few of those—I said interesting.
Even his failures, like 2018’s low-rated Between
Worlds, a metaphysical erotic thriller that breaks the fourth wall and
recognizes Cage’s character as actually
being Nicolas Cage during a sex scene, is far more interesting than the last
highest-rated Hollywood Marvel tentpole you saw. Despite his reputation as
being a quirky, rubber-stamping performer saying yes to every offer that comes his
way, well…broken clocks and all that: saying yes to a lot can yield occasionally
awesome results, and it’s given us horror fans a handful of terrific titles
during this period. Though it’s impossible to keep up with Cage’s movies at
this point, I feel confident in saying it’s been a while since I’ve seen a
particular movie where he slept walk through his role. Cage is always trying, and always giving it his all; he’s quite possibly one of the bravest
actors from the old guard still taking chances with wild abandon, unafraid to ascend
to the most manic heights if it serves the movie. (See the binge-drinking,
underwear-clad bathroom freak-out scene from 2018’s incredible Mandy.) This was something I always knew,
but of which I was reminded following an impromptu double-feature of two Cage
flicks brand new to video: the understated, beautifully made Pig, in which he offers a tragic,
brokenhearted performance as a man seeking the last remaining thing on this
planet he loves, and Prisoners of the
Ghostland, in which he plays a criminal forced to go looking for something
he couldn’t care less about, screaming his face off and gnashing his teeth and contending
with roving desert threats the whole time—ghostly or otherwise. His range
across those two random examples was remarkable, the first bringing tears and
the second bringing wide-eyed astonishment. Very few actors can do this, and
Cage is one of them, though his genuine talent is often forgotten thanks to his
internet folk hero status as a meme, those “crazy reel” YouTube compilations,
and his doppelganger in that old-timey 1800s photos that suggests he is, in
fact, a vampire. (Insert scene from 1988’s Vampire’s
Kiss which sees Cage running down the street screaming, “I’M A VAMPIRE, I’M
A VAMPIRE!”)
Cage himself has described Prisoners of the Ghostland as “the wildest movie [he’s] ever made,” a quote wisely utilized in the film’s marketing, as anyone
considering watching a movie with a concept as wild as this one would likely be
enticed by his presence alone, so once you see that quote, well, holy shit—strap in. Such a proclamation is a very
ballsy boast, as by now I’m sure your own choices for Cage’s craziest are playing
in your brain like a powerpoint presentation. Could Prisoners
of the Ghostland out-crazy the Hellraiser-meets-Death Wish vigilante horror-thriller Mandy, or the stone-faced supernatural comedy/horror
hybrid Willy’s Wonderland, or Werner
Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call
New Orleans, which has a scene where Cage’s bad cop sees the breakdancing figure
of a thug his goons just killed and says, “Shoot him again—his soul is still
dancing,” before breaking out in wild, unhinged laughter? Directed by Japanese
filmmaker Sion Sono (Cold Fish, Suicide Club), Prisoners of the Ghostland is a mish-mash of genres; not content to
borrow influence just from Yojimbo or just from The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly, it’s instead both—a
collision of Japanese samurai warriors and the lone American western about a gunman
looking for redemption, creating a nonsensical world of imagery that feels more like a boardwalk sideshow where tourists stop to put on garish costumes and take novelty photos with their families. Cage, of course, is the film’s man with no name—a leather-clad
cowboy known only as Hero, or sometimes Nobody, yanked out of jail following a botched
bank robbery in a sandy nowhere called Samurai Town and forced into a rescue/retrieval
mission across the desert at the behest of the villainous Governor (Bill
Moseley). Yes, it’s a direct riff on Escape
from New York, or, technically, Escape
from LA, but also contains elements of Dances
with Wolves, Mad Max, Book of Eli, and the spaghetti western
of your choice. Yet, in the face of these largely American and Japanese inspirations,
something about Prisoners of the Ghostland
feels strangely Australian; though that might be explained away by the Mad Max influence, it almost seems to
be echoing the work of cult directors
Brian Trenchard-Smith (Dead End Drive-In,
The Man from Hong Kong) and Russell Mulcahy (Razorback), leaning on crazy color schemes, an unrelenting quirkiness,
and a driving identity only Australian cult cinema is capable of. While I can’t
say Prisoners of the Ghostland’s puréed
influences all get along, I can say
that it’s enchanting, allowing moments of genuine artistry, and, of course,
moments of obligatory Cage freak-out scenes. (Cage’s Hero bellows “TESTICLE!”
at one point with so much operatic gusto that I swear to Bale’s Batman you can
see his tonsils.)
Though both actors have been dabbling
in smaller productions that skip mainstream theatrical debuts altogether, it
seems strange to see Cage sharing the screen with character actor Bill Moseley,
who has been playing unseemly characters in under-the-radar horror flicks since
the 1980s, perhaps most infamously known as Chop Top in Tobe Hooper’s 1986
sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and
Otis Driftwood in Rob Zombie’s Firefly trilogy. Moseley’s career is filled with
as many movies you’ve never heard of as Cage’s…but they’re a different variety of films you’ve never
heard of, and likely stocked with other character actors who make most of their
living traveling the country for various horror conventions. Really, the whole
cast is a combination of different worlds, from the appearance of Cage’s Face/Off co-star Nick Cassavetes as
Hero’s former partner in crime and current desert-dwelling ghost (he’s best
known as having directed The Notebook)
to Sofia Boutella, mainstream sweetheart of Hollywood fare like The Kingsman and Atomic Blonde. How all these people managed to come together and
collaborate on a movie that feels like it transcends each of them as individual
personalities, I’ll never know, but it only adds to Prisoners of the Ghostland’s indefinable identity.
Prisoners of the Ghostland isn’t a movie so much as it is a dare.
It’s a challenge to cinemagoers everywhere, but especially a gauntlet for those
like me who are tasked with writing about it. “Dare to make sense of me,” Prisoners of the Ghostland says. “Go
ahead and find meaning in the madness.” It’s why this review opens with that
spoiler tag: Prisoners of the Ghostland is
critic-proof. I’m sure many have tried to bring forth some kind of thoughtful
analysis, whereas some others simply threw in the towel and dismissed the title
out of hand, tucking tail and fleeing from the carnival of lunacy—from the
strange plot, the in-and-out moments of broad humor, the ambiguous sense of
whether or not anyone involved in the film’s making is taking it seriously, and
what it’s supposed to mean…if it’s supposed to mean anything. If there’s any one
thing that Prisoners of the Ghostland isn’t, it’s subtle. Even when the flick
takes a break from the fight scenes and ghastly gore, its smaller moments are
still peppered with that perceptible sense of “what is this?” It’s so broadly played and relishing in its over-the-topness
that it becomes one of those movies where it can either be about nothing at
all, or whatever you want it to be. You could walk away claiming it’s an
allegory for manifest destiny and I sure as hell wouldn’t argue with you because
you’d still be closer to the true “meaning” than I’ll ever get. One thing is
for sure: if you’ve ever wanted to see a flick where Nicolas Cage wears a full
body leather suit covered in boobytrap explosions while screaming, “I’LL KARATE
CHOP YOU!” and “HI-FUCKING YAH! HI-FUCKING YAH!,” well, I’ve got just the one…
