MANDY REVIEW: Nicholas Cage is at his best when he’s bat-shit crazy Nic Cage…

Nicholas Cage is Nicholas Cage when he’s actually playing Nicholas Cage full-throttle (damn, this is one of those notorious movies when Cage ups the stakes of craziness).

More than most movies, it’s hard to know where to begin with an appreciation of Panos Cosmatos’ “Mandy.” It’s a really difficult film to capture tonally and even narratively in a review, largely because it is such a stylish, and visceral experience that it demands you give yourself over to the bonkers of the premise.

You could compare it to an ‘80s heavy metal album cover sprung to life, but that’s only part of “Mandy,” and at its core doesn’t convey the emotional depth that saturates every frame of this glorious no-holed-bar film.

The year is 1983 and Cage plays Red, a logging worker who is professionally pretty handy with a chainsaw. (Uh, oh.) At the end of a tough temporary gig chopping down trees, Red drives back to his remote cabin (while listening to Ronald Reagan on the radio), in the woods with his girlfriend Mandy, played by the delightful Andrea Riseborough.

ABOVE: Andrea Riseborough in Mandy (2018)

One day, Mandy catches the eye of a cult leader named Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), who proceeds to conjure motorcycle-riding demons to steal the girl and make her one of their own. And the dread-filled electronic score from the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, like a gaunt church organ of doom, makes sure we realize no good can come of this.

Culturedemandsgeeks wants to know are you with us, yet?

In the process, Red is tortured and nearly killed.

The first half of “Mandy” is filled with long, color-saturated takes of impending doom. Even casual behavior like quiet scenes between Mandy and Red have a foreboding nature, and then the film peaks in the middle with a waking nightmare as Red sees something no one should ever see happen to the love of his life.

ABOVE: Linus Roache in Mandy (2018)

Jeremiah and his goons tie them both up and exact various horrific tortures on her, which after their departure are to send Red off on his eye-for-an-eye odyssey. There really are some extraordinary scenes.

Deeply traumatized, Red is destroyed, and there’s a sequence in which Cage drinks an entire bottle of booze (well he ingests the stuff that isn’t poured on his wounds) while in his underwear, howling like an injured animal. It is utterly bizarre when, in shock, he stares at the TV in the corner, which is blaring an ad for something called “Cheddar Goblin”. Sadly, it is a fictional ad, created for this film.

The whole scene will no doubt be GIF-ed and mocked, but it’s actually a great bit of acting, conveying a man not just mourning or in grief but literally destroyed.

So yeah, we can tell you are hooked.

This outrageously over the top film is nothing if not uninhibited, often visually amazing, not to say barking mad.

FINAL REVIEW:

Cage is on magnificent, mind-boggling form as a chainsaw-wielding lumberjack hunting the gang who invaded his home, portraying his character to the max, and the end result is a gritty tale of revenge and lost love.

Mandy got an awful lot of laughs from a crowded niche-theatre when Culturedemandgeeks saw it, all of them deserved, I think,.

It’s an uncompromising midnight movie for the hard-of-heart.

WARNING!!!

Don’t take your loved ones.

Now I need someone to kiss me and stop me from shaking.

4/5 STARS