[Film Review] Mandy (2018)

Red and Mandy live peacefully in the pacific northwest, in a carved out nook of bliss in the woods. This peaceful idyll is shattered with the arrival of the Children of the New Dawn and their megalomaniac leader Jeremiah Sand. Following their encounter with this cruel New Dawn, Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric trip of epic proportion, hell bent on a desire for justice and bloody vengeance. 

I have to preface this review with a disclaimer. Mandy is my favourite film of all time. Ever. So this is not an unbiased review but for that, I make no apologies. I’m not ambivalent, I’m not impartial, I don’t want debate about its merits, I want devotion. I remember seeing Mandy for the first time, at a sold out viewing at Home Manchester, the only cinema showing it for miles around. The lights went down and the screen lit up with the finest opening to a film since Apocalypse Now, King Crimson crooning over an endless pine forest. This sets the scene for a dreamy folktale that descends into a neon tinted ride through hell. 

As a film, Mandy is hard to pin down; ostensibly it’s a revenge flick but it is revenge that drips with folk horror themes, amped up with a supersized dose of heavy metal psychedelic mayhem, all wrapped up in a punk sensibility. It took years for Panos Cosmatos to make, but he pursued his vision of a bloody rampage through the woods because he believed in its perfection and he was right. Everything about Mandy sings, from the incredible cast to the vivid cinematography and the hauntingly beautiful score from Johan Johansson. The characters are perfectly crafted and you feel no remorse for the Children of the New Dawn, who get everything they deserve. From Jeremiah’s grasping, greedy, jealous ‘wife’ to the stupid hangers on who revel in violence and destruction and to Jeremiah Sand himself, a spineless false prophet who sets a devastating chain of events into motion because he is too weak and small to stop it. 

Cosmatos makes expert use of cinematography throughout the film, but it’s particularly powerful when we see Jeremiah and his followers in their dreary campervan. Through use of intense, close up shots we see him pouring out his mystical ramblings to his wet eyed followers. When the camera pans out, he’s just a sweaty, withered man on a tiny bed. But in that campervan, he is God, he is everything. This sets up the film for the riotous fall out that follows, as those devoted to Jeremiah’s cause are made to account for the sins they enact in his name.

Whilst it looks like a fever dream and features delightfully lurid and over the top performances (I’m looking at you, Mr. Cage), at its heart Mandy is a poetic ode to grief and to the desire to seek justice. The remote setting only adds to Red’s isolation, left alone in the wilderness, in the ruin of his dreams. These themes are heavy and could be hard to wield but in Mandy, grief and heartbreak are fuel to the fire of the second act, in which things go, without reservation, batshit crazy. It is in this hyperbolic second act that we see the other central theme of transcendence. Cosmatos plays with this expertly, from the ‘gnarly psycho’ biker gang who have transcended to the point they are not even human anymore, to Red's epic transformation, spurred on by rage, that escalates until he’s something more than human, an unstoppable, ferocious golem. 

With this notion of transcendence, Mandy leaves us to question the true cost of revenge. Red’s transformation allows him to avenge the wrongs he suffers but can he ever find his way back? Has his transformation taken permanent hold and what does that mean for him, in the cold light of the growing dawn at the end of the film? Is that the cost of revenge; to no longer be the man that Mandy loved, to be something other? This is a question we are left to ponder, as no clear resolution is given. What is the ultimate price you would pay for revenge, and would it be worth it when you succeeded?

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