YMMV / Mandy (2018)

• Anti-Climax Boss: Red takes down the Children of the New Dawn pretty easily. Brother Klopek is the only one who puts up a fight. Justified in that they are a cult of drugged-up hippies who had to summon demonic forces to do the dirty work for them.
• Awesome Music:
  • Jóhann Jóhannsson's score (one of the last he composed before his death) has been roundly praised and does an excellent job elevating the movie's visuals into something far greater.
  • The film also opens with King Crimson's "Starless," which is another great example of this.
  • Despite the lyrics being intentionally awful, Jeremiah Sand's song "The Amulet of the Weeping Maze" is actually a pretty nice song.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Some might argue that the whole film is an unbroken stream of BLAMs — but the most deliberately absurd has to be Red, wounded and traumatized, wandering into his house to find the TV left on and being confronted by a bizarre macaroni-and-cheese commercial^note (made for $1,000 by Too Many Cooks creator Caspar Kelly) involving a mascot called the Cheddar Goblin literally vomiting streams of pasta all over two kids.
• Catharsis Factor: It's hard to think of a more satisfying end than Red literally squeezing Jeremiah's skull into mush as the slimy little bastard pleads for his life.
• Complete Monster: Jeremiah Sand is the vicious, cowardly leader of the Children of the New Dawn cult. Having murdered his parents and moved to Los Angeles to indulge in music and drugs, Jeremiah would form countless cults centered around himself to satisfy his narcissism. Working with the demonic Black Skulls biker gang, he makes them his personal attack dogs and allows them to murder and rape whomever they please, holding their chemist hostage to help continue their murder sprees. Taking an obsessive liking to Mandy Bloom, he has the Black Skulls kidnap her and her husband Red Miller, sacrificing one of his men to them as thanks. With the couple in hand, he has Mandy drugged and tries to rape her, while he has Red hung up with barb wire and stabbed in the side, and is Forced to Watch Mandy burned alive after she tarnishes Jeremiah's ego by laughing at him.
• Critical Dissonance: A mild case; the film has garnered critical acclaim but a more mixed reaction among audiences, likely due to its use of Surreal Horror and a slow first half.
• Cult Classic: A trippy, hyper-violent, indie flick starring Nic Cage that went relatively under the radar in 2018; it's definitely on its way towards becoming one.
• Evil Is Cool: Very much averted with Jeremiah Sand and the Children of the New Dawn, overall. But the Black Skulls? How can you get much cooler than demonic bikers?
• He Really Can Act: Critics have praised this film for allowing Nicolas Cage to give a very powerful performance and show off his range.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The last time Linus Roache and Richard Brake were in a movie together, Brake was the bad guy. Here it's the opposite.
  • Nic Cage in a movie featuring demonic motorcyclists?
• Ho Yay: Jeremiah and Brother Swann seem close. Real close. It doesn't help that Jeremiah later offers to suck Red's dick.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of people watched this movie just to see NICOLAS CAGE IN A CHAINSAW FIGHT.
• Narm Charm: Considering it stars Nic Cage, the interplay between unintentional hilarity and genuine effectiveness is almost inevitable.
  • The image of a middle-aged man in a cartoon tiger T-shirt, tighty whities and tube socks sloppily drinking while screaming his head off in a bathroom sounds absolutely ridiculous on paper, and considering said man is Cage, it sounds like just another one of the hilarious Freak Out moments he's known for. But considering he's just been tortured and forced to watch his wife burn alive by the cult, all of his emotions are justified, and the scene is genuinely devastating.
  • Red referring to Jeremiah's cult and the Black Skulls as "weirdo, hippie types" and "gnarly psychos ... crazy evil", respectively. Then again, coming from Cage, it actually works.
  • The second half of the film, when all bets are off, is extremely over the top. However, the build-up, along with the Catharsis Factor and quality, make it extremely entertaining.
  • This image◊ of Red following his Roaring Rampage of Revenge is either unintentionally hilarious or downright terrifying. Or, as it's Cage, a weird mix of both.
  • Jeremiah Sand's song "The Amulet of the Weeping Maze" is hilariously awful but also pretty nice at the same time.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Richard Brake as The Chemist.
  • Also the legendary Bill Duke as Red's friend Caruthers, getting some of the best lines in the movie.
    Caruthers: Whatcha hunting?
    Red: Jesus freaks.
    Caruthers: Didn't know they were in season.
• Posthumous Credit: Johann Johannsson, the composer of the film, died shortly after the film's premiere in Sundance Festival. The film is dedicated to him.
• Signature Scene:
  • Unsurprisingly, the chainsaw duel has been described as an undeniable highlight of the movie and it's hard to find a critic's review that doesn't mention it. It's even featured on at least one of the movie's posters.
  • Red's screaming, roaring, sobbing breakdown in the bathroom after Mandy dies, the emotional high point of the movie and a true showcase for Nic Cage's true acting skills.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first hour of the movie mostly focuses on Mandy's romance with Red and Jeremiah Sand's plot to kidnap her.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • With surreal religious imagery, demonic mooks, over-the-top violence, and highly saturated colors, this might be the closest Western live-action adaptation of Go Nagai's Devilman series. Perhaps better than the actual live-action Devilman adaptation.
  • The movie is also like a more stylish version of I Saw the Devil, albeit far more formalist and more surreal.
• Squick:
  • Jeremiah's description of the initiation ceremony that he put his followers in Live To Tell through. It requires the initiate to bite the head off a live grasshopper, then draw their own blood, which the rest of the members would drink.
  • When Red crushes Sand's head, we see the whole thing too. His eye even pops out!
• Tear Jerker:
  • Mandy's dream wherein she finds a doe dying in the middle of a sunlit forest.
  • Mandy's death, being sealed in a sleeping bag that is lit on fire while Red is Forced to Watch. It's the impetus for the vengeance that drives the film, and an easy contender for its most disturbing and devastating scene. Apart from the heartbreaking image of Red screaming and sobbing as he watches her burn, the scene is presented in slow-motion with almost no audio other than this somber music cue, allowing the sensations of pure despair and powerlessness to sink in.
  • When Red frees himself from his barbed wire binds, the first thing he does is crawl to Mandy's ashes, still in the form of her face. Then, as if nature itself was watching and decided to ruin the moment, a gust of wind blows by and disintegrates Mandy's face, by extension destroying the last of her physical being right in front of Red.
  • Red's breakdown in the bathroom. He was forced to watch his wife disintegrating to ashes and had a nightmare of her flesh rotting afterward. It may seem like Narm to some, but Nicolas Cage's performance and the eye-catching cinematography really sell the tragedy of the moment.
  • A more subtle example: Red saying in a quiet monotone after Sis slashes him, "That was my favourite shirt." It may seem like a case of Skewed Priorities and maybe even Narm, but taking into account that it was the shirt he wore when he first met Mandy and also the last shirt Mandy was wearing, it's actually kind of sad.
• Ugly Cute: The Cheddar Goblin.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Ronald Reagan is playing on the radio in Red's car as he drives home, criticising pornography and abortion. Red turns him off in distaste. The film can be seen as a condemnation of Reagan policies that were perceived by some as Puritanical, overly stringent and driving young people into the arms of depraved hippy cults like the Manson Family that were active in the 80s — essentially real-life Children of the New Dawn. The fact that at one point Red calls one of the villains a "snowflake", a contemporary term used by rightists to describe far-leftists (and by the far-right to describe anyone to the left of them) can also be taken as this.
• The Woobie:
  • Lucy, as the sole member of the Children of the New Dawn who isn't thoroughly despicable. She is repeatedly raped by Jeremiah, almost forced to shoot herself in front of Red to prove her devotion, and sheds tears when she sees Brother Swann brutally killed. Red spares her and lets her go free, seemingly understanding that she's as much a victim of the cult as he and Mandy.
  • Mandy. Despite the implied abuse that her father put her through, she seems to be a kind-hearted individual, which makes her abduction and death at the hands of Jeremiah and his cult that much more tragic.
  • Red. Prior to the events of the movie, Word of God says he was a violent man who settled down when he met Mandy. Her death drove him over the edge again.

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