7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.9 |
Mandy is set in 1983 in the primal wilderness where Red Miller, a broken and haunted man, hunts an unhinged religious sect who brutally attacked the love of his life.
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Ned Dennehy, Olwen FouéréHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 21% |
Surreal | 18% |
Period | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
If the title of this review isn't familiar, it's a variation on a line from a Barry Manilow power ballad of the Seventies. That song is one of the few sources that writer/director Panos Kosmatos hasn't ransacked for his latest film, which stars Nicolas Cage in his ongoing effort to pay off his debts to the IRS. Kosmatos, son of George (Rambo: First Blood, Part II), established his deranged packrat approach to filmmaking with Beyond the Black Rainbow, of which my former colleague, Casey Broadwater, aptly observed that "the film just doesn't have the substance to match Cosmatos' keen sense of style". As it was then, so it remains now.
Mandy was shot on Alexa by Benjamin Loeb (King Cobra), using anamorphic lenses in a now-standard technique for softening a digital image to render it more
"film-like". RLJ Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects director Cosmatos' preference for dark
and indistinct compositions with frames where figures are routinely underlit and detail is often
deliberately faint. In stronger lighting, detail is superior, and the shifts among levels of visibility
appear to be part of the director's and cinematographer's visual strategy for controlling the mood.
Colors have been tinted away from realism from the outset, whether it's the greenish blue of the
lake on which Mandy and Red go rowing or the nightly rainbow of colors in the sky, which look
like the northern lights on mescaline. The director's style has often been compared to the
signature lighting of Hammer horror films, and indeed there are frequent washes of red, blue and
occasionally green light emanating from nowhere in particular. Nothing about Mandy is realistic,
and that includes the lighting.
(The absence of even an attempt at surface realism is why I don't agree with the invocation of
David Lynch's work as a precursor to Mandy. Lynch's expressions of evil and eeriness are
effective precisely because he carefully establishes hyper-realistic environments into which they
erupt. Imagine a version of Twin Peaks that opened with the demonic Bob strutting toward the
camera or a Blue Velvet that replaced the establishing
shots of children playing and firemen waving with Frank Booth maniacally gnawing on Dorothy's velvet robe. Lynch builds to those moments slowly,
deliberately, but Kosmatos can't wait to get there.)
The Blu-ray image routinely exhibits what looks like a fine pattern of film grain, which is
unusual in a digitally captured project, especially one photographed on Alexa. It's possible that
this was engineered in post-production to match up the image with the Eighties time period, or it
may be a byproduct of the consistent underlighting. In any case, the faux "grain" appears to be an
inherent quality of the source and not a fault of the Blu-ray. (It can also be observed in the
deleted scenes.) RLJ has departed from its usual penny-pinching and placed Mandy on a
BD-50, allowing it a fairly healthy average bitrate of 27.99 Mbps. Let's hope that this aspect of
the release marks the beginning of a trend.
Mandy's 5.1 audio mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, has numerous loud effects,
particularly when there's violence happening, but some of the most interesting sonic tricks are
subtler. A fine example occurs during the scene discussed in the "Feature" section where
Jeremiah's face morphs back and forth with Mandy's. He is speaking the whole time, and his
voice extends outward into the room, wrapping itself through all five speakers to place the
viewer in the same disoriented space as the severely drugged Mandy. It's a terrific use of sound
to underscore the psychological pressure being applied to the cult leader's latest victim.
By far the spookiest component of Mandy's soundtrack is the haunting electronic score by the
late Jóhann Jóhannsson (Arrival), one of his
last, which may be the film's most effective element
when it comes to establishing the alternative universe for which the film's creator is so obviously
reaching. Jóhannsson's abstract and unpredictable rhythms are an interesting choice for a film
that relies on heavy metal for imagery and inspiration, but no one has every accused the film's
director of consistency.
It says a lot about the industrially processed pablum being routinely served up by the major
studios today that a deeply flawed but flavorful concoction like Mandy has been so widely praised
(including, I must note in fairness, by my colleagues Brian Orndorf and Josh Katz, whose
opinions I respect). But just because something is refreshingly different doesn't make it good,
and Mandy is awful. If blood, nonsense and headache-inducing lighting are your idea of a good
time, by all means acquire it. When the novelty wears off, you'll have nothing left but shiny
cinematic sludge. If you want to experience a more inventive and entertaining blend of horror, heavy metal,
deadly romance and, yes, anime, try
Deathgasm. It's humorous by design, whereas
Mandy actually expects to be taken seriously.
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Ahí va el diablo
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