Nicolas Cage Delivers in His 'Craziest Role'

Throw together revenge, demons, a cult, and a whole lot of blood and you've got Panos Cosmatos' Mandy, making a splash with a 95% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The film stars Nicolas Cage as a lumberjack living peacefully in a cabin the woods with his girlfriend, Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), until a cult leader steals her away. Here's what critics are saying:

• "It's not afraid to let the camera linger on gore or draw out dialogue in creepy tones with ice-cold stares. And that's where this movie wins," writes Samantha Incorvaia at the Arizona Republic. Sure, it's an "acquired taste," but "it has the potential to be the next cult classic" with its "technicolor LSD-like shots" and creativity to spare. Cage, Incorvaia adds, is perfectly cast in "his craziest role yet."
• "Nothing he's done to date can really prepare you for the raw, unbridled insanity of his performance" in this "blood-soaked revenge flick … on angel dust," is how Chris Nashawaty puts it at Entertainment Weekly. "There's an element of how-weird-can-we-go-with-this-thing daredevilry to Mandy," but "anyone who still hasn't walked out of the theater after the first hour or so will be grooving," he adds.

• "For those who think nothing of staying up past midnight to devour the strange and fantastic, it hits the sweetest of spots" as "Cosmatos displays a fervent love for all things extreme, culminating in a chainsaw battle for the ages," writes Barry Hertz at the Globe and Mail. He refers to Mandy as "the most bewildering film-going experience of the year."
• At Rolling Stone, David Fear heaps plenty of praise on Cage. Unleashed, he'll "remind you what a compelling presence he is," particularly when shrieking in a two-minute bathroom scene. Fear also commends Riseborough on "lending a lysergic nervousness to her heroine" and late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson on delivering a "truly gorgeous" final score.

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