Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
A notorious criminal must break an evil curse
If you thought it felt like maybe lately I just haven’t been inspired enough in my reviews, I’ve got a treat for you tonight as I steadily work towards clearing out my backlog of “Movies I added to a list of things I need to see and haven’t gotten to yet.” This one might be a contender for one that’s spent the longest on that list - and in all honesty for no good reason. It has Nicolas Cage in it - I know one way or the other I’m in for a good time if he’s in it. Still, excuses aside we are going to rock and roll - and hopefully you have an attention span and don’t get stuck on the details, or you might just join the Prisoners of the Ghostland.
This movie has layers - and I can’t go into all those layers if I want to follow my typical modus operandi. Still, we can boil this bad thing down to a few different stories. Our first is what we get at the start - a bank heist that looks like it might be going in the wrong direction. We’ll come back to this story-line throughout the movie and unfurl how it plays out, usually at any moment the main character decides to pass out for whatever screen reason. Our second, more main story involves “the quest” - that is what’s printed on the pitch of the box, a criminal has to go out into the wastes and find a girl whose gone missing. Given he’s a criminal and not to be trusted, he gets to be all suited up suicide squad style so there’s an immediate explosive punctuation to remind him he’s not doing as intended. This also gives a timeline for his motivation - three days, if he finds the girl and she speaks her name into his wrist, he gets two more for a grand total of five days to bring her back safe and sound before he goes up like a miniature Chernobyl. Along the way, the movie will delve into a lot more thoughts than just these two lines - but the interplay back and forth will inform a lot of how things are going to end up playing out, so it’d be to the viewers benefit to pay attention even if it seems pretty unrelated.
The acting is pretty much exactly what the movie called for, and therefore I assume pretty good. We get some pretty fun and popular crazy-Cage for this one, which both brings some humor and tension at times throughout the movie.This also plays into the rather eccentric side cast, which ranges everywhere from local boot-wearing revolver toting sheriffs, robed up sword wielding samurais, all the way to some dude that covers women in mannequin parts to “hide” them from evil. Yeah, it’s a bizarre mix, but in turn I think you can probably get the feel for what I mean when i say “What it called for.” Some of the deliveries, if not all of the acting jobs, can be anywhere from played muted and level all the way to coke-snorting prophecy priests doing dance numbers 11. A note from the writer: I saw no prophecy priests snorting coke, it’s just an analogy. Either way, the movie feels so mind-trip weird that no acting job would manage to feel out of place here, even a heart felt emotional one - although expect less of that and more “not the bees!”
The characters are intertwined and all sorts. Some side characters get their own little individual story reasons for doing things, like the governors private samurai. Other characters are less individual and more wider-story related depth such as the Ghosts. Some will play together with each other and we only see how it plays out as the movie goes on and gives out more information through these flashbacks and the likes. You could claim the main hero has a bit of an arc from criminal to hero - but I feel this entire movie would be better summed up with a statement like “do not judge a book by it’s cover".” Like many things out there this onion has a lot of layers that you don’t necessarily expect from a movie with this pitch at first glance - and it really doesn’t hurt the movie in the slightest. It helps boost some of the characters, allowing for a range of judgements cast on different characters without actually changing how they act entirely, simply by providing information that can change a point of view on the information already given. With all of that being said - the vast majority of the characters are not really important to the plot nor do they have much character to them outside of just being there determined role of “bad guy” or “crazy survivor” or “spooky ghost.”
Ghosts of smokes.
Another thing of note that’s not entirely expected - I really enjoyed the music here. Although I couldn’t exactly hum it out or anything afterwards, the soundtrack sticks with me in at least a broad theory, if that makes any sense. For example, it’s at times very synth-tinged western, making it feel like a wild west flick that would have purple neon and lasers. Other times, it’ll throw in a bit of that samurai style, or bigger broad sounds you’d more expect for things. It’s an interesting mix and it adds a little flavor to an already over-the-top movie. Audio deliveries are good, if not also over the top. There’s some Japanese mixed in throughout the movie, and it is usually subtitled throughout so us less fluent folks can read what’s being said - but there is at least a few moments in which the closed captions will be lazy as crap and just say “distorted Japanese” and have us shrug and roll an eye or two. Even with the lack of understanding, you will still hear everything said just fine - it’s balanced well. I will also say there’s a few spots where I’m not entirely sure that the subtitles are quoting things as being said - I know, for instance, at least one line that’s a nod towards Shakespeare - unless it’s just mistyped on the subtitles, in which case it’d probably be a quote from Shakespeare, poor Yorick indeed.
The costumes get an absolute monster truck of room to be playing with. The mix of so many things - samurai, western, apocalypse, ghosts - is a kid’s toy box of imagination. You get the leather bomb-toting hero outfit, you’ve got cowboy hats, boots and scarves, you’ve got classic samurai attire and ladies with somewhat-painted faces, and that’s all just in the starting town. After you get outside of there, it’s everything from suits, samurai armor, prisoner garb, flowing outfits with plenty of dangly straps, led-ridden combinations of random junk, and of course mannequin-skin adorned folks. It’s an absolute smorgasbord. This of course plays into the weirdness of the movie, although it also doesn’t really do you a whole lot of favors if you are trying to somehow place when or where any of this is supposed to be - from samurai town to straight burnt out apocalypse ruins, there’s just pedal to the metal transition here. It does provide for a few different things besides visual diversity and keeping things interesting though.
One example is the action scenes. You get shoot outs, you get sword fights, you get some fist fights. Heck, you even get a pretty brief car trick. The entire thing also gets to a dream like state numerous times - and it’s pretty well intentional when it does it. In some regard, it’s almost like we are seeing the world through a crazy mans eyes - which would be a bit fitting considering how unhinged the main character feels at times. Violence is here in a more classic over-the-top blood spray way, as opposed to extensive gore usage - outside the testicle gag. The props, costume, and effects folk had quite a bit to do with this, and the editing department got to stitch it all together somehow to make things mostly coherent. I do say mostly, because every now and then it seems like someone will get a coat out of nowhere or something along those lines - nothing movie breaking but you might double take it. The biggest downside to all of this different stuff coming together is it can be very distracting - I had no problems following this, but I heard at least one “why are they doing that” despite the movie having played out why twice before the question was asked - so if your easily distracted you’ll probably be confused.
Westerns, samurai, and Nic Cage.
I’m glad I finally got around to watching this movie. It was a fun little trip, and I love it feels at least slightly like someone just threw a bunch of stuff at a board and made a movie out of whatever stuck. The acting is a bit over the top (and under the bottom), the plot as it plays out is a layered little thing, and the overall aesthetic is bonkers. It’s got cowboys, it’s got samurais, it’s got apocalypse - a mix of things that you wouldn’t necessarily thing need to be kept apart from each other on the tray, but is always nice when they do combine. Oh yeah, and an absolutely wacky Nicolas Cage, who manages to flip from absurd to emotionally serious and back like it’s a button press. What more could you really want?