Mandy (2018)

What could have been a fun throwback to 80s fantasy horror (if rather tired at this point - surely it's time to move past neon and synth and onto pastiching post-modern 90s horror by now?) is ruined by that strain of pretension in 2010s horror that leads to incredibly slow, boring movies. Much like Hereditary or The VVitch, this film is at least half an hour too long and stretches the first act of any regular horror out for almost the entire film. To be fair to Mandy, it does get moving in the last 40 minutes or so, but even then what could be a fun Evil Dead 2 (or at least Kung Fury) style action horror, with Cage descending into madness as he slashes his way through Lovecraftian fishmen in Clive Barker get-ups, drowns under the film's constant need to say 'look at me, I'm so weird! All the performances and lighting and camera moves and processing and soundscape is so weird, and the narrative is so disjointed and meandering and hollow, and the action scenes are so difficult to follow!'

This would probably have made a very cool fake grindhouse trailer.

Rating: Bad.