It is, at its core, a downright biblical tale of evil and vengeance.
“Mandy” is a fascinating genre exercise in that it is as untraditional a horror movie as you’ll see this year but also relies on so many classics of the form. Scenes play out like songs on an album, episodically cast in extreme color palettes that amplify the trippy, surreal natures of the entire experience. The heavy metal comparison is apt not just because the genre often included figures like the nightmarish creations that Jeremiah brought to life but in the very structure of “Mandy,” which unfolds in a very untraditional manner in both halves. With a title card that divides the film in half, “Mandy” then becomes the movie that most people will remember in that it’s about Red working his way through both the demons that Jeremiah conjured and, inevitably, the gang itself. Like a character in a Queensrÿche concept album, Red emerges from this destruction with his plans for vengeance. It’s going to 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. 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. 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.
The first half of “Mandy” is filled with long, color-saturated takes of impending doom. In the process, Red is tortured and nearly killed. 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. Nicolas Cage stars in “Mandy” as Red Miller, a lumberjack who lives a quiet life in the woods with his girlfriend Mandy, played by Andrea Riseborough.