On September 17th, director Sion Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland, which star Nicolas Cage has said “might be the wildest movie” he has ever made, will be reaching theatres. To prepare viewers for the insanity this film has in store for them, a trailer has been released online and can be seen in the embed above.
Described as a “delirious mash-up of Western, samurai, and post-apocalyptic thriller”, Prisoners of the Ghostland was written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai. The film is set
in the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town, where a ruthless bank robber (Cage) is sprung from jail by wealthy warlord The Governor (Bill Moseley), whose adopted granddaughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) has gone missing. The Governor offers the prisoner his freedom in exchange for retrieving the runaway. Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct within three days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman — and his own path to redemption.
Bernice has “disappeared into a dark supernatural universe”, and Sono has said that “There are samurais, there are ninjas, and ghosts are part of the story as well.” Sono wouldn’t promise that this is Cage’s wildest film, but said if viewers “think that this is the wildest movie that he’s ever made, the craziest movie that he’s ever made, then I would be really really happy to hear that.”
Cage, Moseley, and Boutella are joined in the cast by Tak Sakaguchi, Yuzuka Nakaya, and Nick Cassavetes.
I’m looking forward to watching Prisoners of the Ghostland, but even though all this craziness sounds very promising, JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray has warned that we should keep our expectations in check. He saw the film as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival and ended up giving it a 5/10 review, which you can read at THIS LINK.