Director Panos Cosmatos's MANDY is a film I was fully sold on a year ago, when it was announced that Nicolas Cage would be starring in this "surrealist, heavy-metal-soaked story of battle axes and demon bikers". My enthusiasm for this project got even greater when rave reviews came pouring out after its Sundance premiere earlier this year. Our own Chris Bumbray was lucky enough to catch the Sundance screening and gave MANDY an 8/10 review, describing the overall film as "uncompromisingly strange" and specifically the last 40 minutes as "unrelentingly brutal, but often hilarious".
Set in the primal wilderness of an apocalyptic 1983, the film tells the following story:
The quiet life of devoted couple Red (Nicolas Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) takes a dark and bizarre turn when a nightmarish cult and their maniacal leader (Linus Roache) seek to possess Mandy… body and soul. A shocking assault on the innocent pair leads to a spiraling, surreal, bloody rampage of all out, mind-altering vengeance.
Also in the cast with Cage, Riseborough, and Roache are Ned Dennehy, Olwen Fouéré, Richard Brake, Bill Duke, and Sam Louwyk.
One of my most highly anticipated movies of the year, MANDY will be in theatres on September 14th.
To help us prepare, a trailer has arrived online and it is a glorious sight to behold: