Movie Review : Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
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In the history of good ideas, there was perhaps never a better idea than to have unhinged American actor Nicolas Cage and unhinged Japanese director Sion Sono collaborating on the same movie. The former seemed tailor made for the violent and boundless brand of storytelling of the latter. But good ideas live theory and in the real world at the same time and face a lot of pressure. Prisoners of the Ghostland had a lot to live up to and it only kind of did.
Prisoners of the Ghostland tells the story of a dangerous criminal (Cage) who gets released from prison by a local warlord (Bill Moseley) in order to rescue one of his concubines (Sofia Boutella) from a cursed territory called the Ghostland. That’s about it, really. It’s the story of a transaction between criminals that doesn’t go quite according to the plan: reestablishing someone’s freedom vs reestablishing someone’s power.
Better simple than complicated, right? Well, it depends.
Caging Cage
I had mixed feelings about Prisoners of the Ghostland. It’s gorgeous without being original at all. It has the proto-Steampunk aesthetic of every Terry Gilliam movie with elements of Western. It has a bold sense of humor that dehumanizes its lead character more than it empathizes with him. It has fun and creative fight scenes that don’t reveal character, because there isn’t any character to be reveals. It was obviously made by talented people who weren’t trying.
This is another movie where Nicolas Cage is required to basically play himself: an unstable man who wears leather garments in unfortunate temperatures. This idea of a Steampunk Western set in the wreckage of contemporary society is great, but Prisoners of the Ghostland doesn’t really have anything to say about it. It’s content with wallowing in damsel-in-distress tropes from Sergio Leone movies with Sofia Boutella as a stand-in for Claudia Cardinale.
By deliberately underwriting (or shooting in an underwritten way) and having his lead performers being more like stereotypes than actual people, Sion Sono kind of sold his film short. Prisoners of the Ghostland is a very colorful, whimsical and somewhat violent version of a movie you’ve already seen, kind of like if Waterworld revealed weird sex jokes if you played it backwards or something. It’s like he took Occidental audiences for morons.
The Uncaging of Bernice
The most interesting character in Prisoners of the Ghostland was by far Bernice, played by the talented and often miscast Sofia Boutella. In many ways, she’s really the only character who’s telling a complete story arc. When the protagonist finds her, she’s trapped some kind of plaster mold and rendered unable to speak or move. The movie is her pledge for self-actualization in a brutal world. It is happening in periphery, but it’s happening in a pretty cool way.
Slowly, Bernice is recuperating parts of herself and the more she recuperates, the more she gains. The less she lets the brutal men who once controlled her life dictate who she is, the more complete she becomes. To be 100% honest, I would’ve taken an entire movie about Bernice without Nicolas Cage in it and I fucking love Nicolas Cage. He just feels like a distraction in this movie like he often does. There was a smarter movie in there than the one that emerged.
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Prisoners of the Ghostland is not a bad movie. It’s just not a very exciting one. It is straightforward, predictable and gives you a weird feeling of déjà vu. Nicolas Cage might’ve said that it’s the wildest movie he’s ever been involved with, but I got a couple straight-to-video weirdoes I’d like to remind him of. This is not even in the same league as the excellent and very wild Mandy. That’s the thing with good ideas. They always have a lot to live up to.
