There are two types of bad movies.

1. Movies that are so bad they transcend taste and decency to the point they become enjoyable, like “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “The Room”

2. God Awful shit that makes you want to track down whoever made it and demand compensation for stealing part of your life, like anything directed by Vincent Gallo.

Don't watch this movie.

Nicholas Cage’s new film “Mandy” is both of them. I didn’t know much about the movie when I went into it other than it was supposed to be weird and bloody. It’s been many years since I got excited about a Nicholas Cage movie but it got a 7.0 rating on IMDB, which intrigued me because the internet has absolutely no problem eviscerating a Nic Cage flick. I checked out the user reviews and noticed a pretty even split between 10/10 scores and 1/10. The ones were from people who cared about good movies and the 10’s came from people who love camp and gore. I’m not a big horror fan but I love ridiculous shit, and I know Nick can deliver on ridiculous camp.

The best way to describe “Mandy” is: A twelve year old boy watched a horror movie marathon and decided to write a script. Then he hired someone off Craigslist to direct it, but the only person he could afford was a freshman film student at the local community college majoring in perfume commercials.

I’m just going to lay out pretty much the whole movie since this isn’t the type of movie you watch because you care about the plot.

Nick Cage is a lumberjack in the early 80’s. He’s married to that chick who is Tom Cruises’s wife in “Oblivion” but they made her really plain looking and asked her to forget how to act. The first hour of the movie is almost completely unwatchable. Seriously, the only way I kept watching was to see how much worse it could get. The dialogue is like those YouTube videos where people record toddlers talking and have adults act it out.

Theres’s a few scenes that drag on for eternity where I guess it’s supposed to show them being in love. The lighting is washed out in pink neon and it’s full of college documentary music that drones on in ominous tones like, “Dooooonnnnnnne dooooooneeee doooooo Weeeeeeee duuuuun.” Then there’s a scene where Mandy is walking through a forest and sees a dead baby deer, then it cuts to the couple watching tv and she starts talking about her childhood where her dad made her and her siblings beat a pillowcase full of baby birds to death with a crowbar. Then she’s walking in slow motion by the side of the road and some guy sees her while driving by.

Then we see meet some weird ass cult with arguably the worst dialogue in all of cinema history and the guy is the leader. He tells his cult people he wants Mandy so he gives a stone flute to one of his goons and tells him to sacrifice a fat kid. They all go out to the woods and summon a gang of Hellraiser-esque demons riding four-wheelers with the flute and they all go kidnap Nick cage and Mandy. Then the demons run off with the fat kid.
Nick gets tied up with barb wire while Mandy gets dosed with some acid and stung on the neck by a giant wasp. Then the cult leader shows her his penis and makes her listen to folk music. She starts laughing so they put her in a sleeping bag and set her on fire in front of Nick.

If you have to watch this movie just fast forward to the hour mark. After the cultists leave Nicholas Cage escapes his barbed wire restraints and drinks a bunch of vodka, despite having been stabbed in the liver. Then he goes to a run down trailer and meets that bald black guy from Predator who had the Gatling gun. The wise black man tells him all the cultists fried their brains on acid and turned crazy, and he conveniently knows where they are. Then, for no good reason we cut to a montage scene where Nicholas Cage forges a chrome Klingon battle axe out of molten metal. The next hour is an orgy of trippy ultra-violence. A bunch of people get their heads chopped off. Nick breaks one of the Hellraiser Hippie’s neck after screaming, “You ruined my favorite shirt!” I’m sure most teenager’s favorite part of the movie will be the chainsaw fight right before the final boss encounter.

I don’t really want to tell anyone to watch this movie, because you shouldn’t, but you’re probably gonna have to just to see how truly horrible it is. I strongly encourage anyone brave enough to take my word for it and not watch the first hour, or at least watch it on fast forward.