Mandy

Panos Cosmatos exorcises the genre demons of his childhood (his father is the director of Rambo II and Cobra) with a trash revenge story transformed into a mystical psychotropic epic. The film completely fulfils Alejandro Jodorowsky’s dictate "I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs". Nicolas Cage is promoted to the role of a visual artifact in an airbrushed scene from the side of a van brought to life. Nevertheless, proclamations that Cage has reached the maximum level of madness in his acting are rather overwrought – in this respect, the second Ghost Rider still holds the lead. (07/04/2018)

Well, how to approach this? On the one hand, we have impressive formal confidence that warrants praise. All those colour filters, sound deformations and blurry visuals look a bit cheap and become boring after a while, but they do build a sufficiently thick atmosphere to overcome the initial monotonous pace and WTF dialogues. The insane villains felt annoying rather than terrifying and the logic is something nobody thought too much about, but that’s not what this is about; this is a film about Nicolas Cage coming out of a hallucinogenic haze wielding a home-made mace to massacre religious fanatics with a smile on his face, and this is something that’s fits perfectly not only Cage, whose performance is flawless, but also Cosmatos, someone who doesn’t do routine and presents a chase after cult-nuts as an authentic road to hell, and he deserves all my sympathy for that. For the time being, 70%, and I’m keeping the fourth * for next time. (10/29/2018)

Panos Cosmatos finally found a suitable topic for his distinctive and visually extravagant LSD experiments - a lumberjack nightmare on bad drugs with brutally bloody orgies, chainsaws and bikers from hell. Only the hallucinogenic passages and the demonically-psychedelic music of Jóhan Jóhannsson save the first half and its extremely relaxed pace, but then such a sectarian trash metal epic starts that it is difficult not to succumb to it, although resistance to extreme violence is a necessary precondition. Nicolas Cage's crazy performance amounts to a guilty pleasure on a trip. Mandy is a cruel and evil film, but it is equally distinctive. (06/30/2018)

Mandy is a hallucinogenic grindhouse revenge bloodbath, at the beginning of which there is a love story engulfed by cosmic darkness. It is surprisingly compelling and conceptually cohesive, given the cheap filters and B-movie budget. It is also pleasantly refreshing in the context of the artsy festival mood. The highlight, of course, is Cage drinking in white shorts and an orange t-shirt with a tiger emblazoned on it. [Cannes] (05/14/2018)

Weird. Very. While I liked the colorful hypnotic atmosphere supported by Jóhannsson's unsettling music, With its mysticism, overwrought monologues and dialogue, excessive running time, and the wait for a final showdown that was ultimately the most boring scene of the entire film, I was ultimately disappointed by Mandy. And I hadn't even expected anything from it in the first place. (07/30/2020)