Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Mandy Blu-ray Movie Review

♬ But I'm Sending You Away, Oh Mandy ♪

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 31, 2018

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 is Mandy Bloom (the estimable Andrea Riseborough, horribly misused), long-time live-in partner of Red Miller (Cage), a logger somewhere in the Pacific Northwest in 1983. By day, Mandy works as a cashier at a gas station, and in her off-hours she draws fantastical visions that Red admires and that are inspired by her love of heavy metal (she routinely wears Black Sabbath and Mötley Crüe t-shirts). There are hints of a troubled past, with Mandy's inward damage reflected in a kind of facial scarring that looks like a network of varicose veins descending from her left eye. It is no doubt her wounded quality that catches the attention of Jeremiah (Linus Roache), an indolently charismatic cult leader whose van carting his followers passes Mandy one day as she walks home from work. Jeremiah decides that Mandy must be his next bride and directs his followers to summon the Black Skulls, a species of biker-gang-from-hell, to kidnap her.

The Black Skulls are perhaps the clearest early sign that Mandy has lurched into the Twilight Zone (and not in a good way). They resemble nothing so much as the demons from the Hellraiser series, and they're summoned by the sound of a mystical horn, although they're apparently meant to be humans who have somehow been transformed by a specialized concoction of LSD. Why the Black Skulls are willing to do Jeremiah's bidding with such restraint, instead of simply tearing Red and Mandy limb from limb, remains a mystery, since their manic behavior closely resembles that of the Reavers in Firefly (another on the long list of sources that Kosmatos has plundered). But the gang captures Mandy and Red in their remote cabin, where Mandy rejects Jeremiah's advances, even though she's been thoroughly drugged. The scene in which Jeremiah offers himself is a signature example of Kosmatos' trippy style, as a closeup on Jeremiah's talking face morphs back and forth between his features and Mandy's. It's a clever effect, but its impact is more technological than emotional. It screams for attention even louder than any of the crazy characters. The same goes for many of the film's stylistic flourishes, including the random anime inserts. (Come to think of it, Mandy probably would have been more convincing if it had been done entirely in anime.)

Strip away the layers of genre self-indulgence, and Mandy is little more than a backwoods Death Wish with a lumberjack turned vigilante by a home invasion. (There's also a hefty dose of the writer and his wife tormented by Little Alex in A Clockwork Orange; Cosmatos clearly idolizes Kubrick.) The director liberally piles on enough psychedelia, splatter effects and torture porn for an entire trilogy, and he has his actors chewing the scenery beyond even the usual Nic Cage self-indulgence (and Cage's isn't even the wildest performance in the film).

After Red has been transformed by Jeremiah's attack, he acquires not only determination but superpowers. The cult ceremonially stabs him, so that he can feel his life ebbing away while he watches the horrors being visited upon Mandy—a nasty device lifted from Law Abiding Citizen, a far superior Death Wish knock-off. But the hero of that film took months to regain his physical strength, whereas Red manages to break free and heal his vital organs by pouring vodka on the wound, which miraculously knits both inside and out. Then he performs one demanding physical task after another—including surviving a car wreck that should have killed him—with little more than a limp as a reminder of his injuries. Mandy is that kind of film, constantly jumping from one ridiculous development to the next, while it tries to distract you with blurry images and gross-out distractions from giant centipedes to gushers of vomited blood to the length of a villain's chainsaw. And all it has to offer for a resolution is flame and more hallucinations (assuming, of course, you haven't tuned out by then, which I predict will be many viewers' reaction, should they have the misfortune to be lured in).

Mandy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Mandy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 21:49): An extended series of interviews with both cast and crew, played in voiceover against a background of film excerpts, concept art, storyboards and on-set footage.



• Deleted & Extended Scenes (1080p; 2.39:1; 13:55): The scenes are not separately listed or selectable. A title card precedes each one.
  
  I don't know what else was left on the cutting room floor, but these lifts reflect a clear effort to eliminate anything resembling "normal" human interaction that might give viewers an opportunity to reflect on Mandy's fundamental lack of credibility. Note that Cage has more dialogue in these scenes than in much of the film. The extended encounter with Caruthers (Bill Duke) provides additional background on the Black Skulls biker gang, and you can see why it had to be dramatically shortened. The more you learn about them, the more you roll your eyes at the scary campfire story they really are.


• Gas Station
• Red & Mandy Cook Dinner
• Brother Swan and Sand Inside Van
• Cheddar Goblin—Uncut
• Caruthers Extended



• Introductory Trailers: As usual with RLJ/Image Blu-rays, the film's trailer is not included. At startup the disc plays trailers for Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dog Eat Dog.

Mandy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.