By: Andrew Wing

Prisoners of the Ghostland is a 2021 American horror Western film directed by Sion Sono (best known for directing the 2008 film Love Exposure), from a script by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai. It stars Nicolas Cage (Raising Arizona, Leaving Las Vegas), Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Mummy), and Bill Moseley (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Firefly trilogy).

Its plot revolves around a notorious criminal, Hero (Cage), who is sent to rescue the governor’s (Moseley) adopted granddaughter (Boutella), who has disappeared into a dark region called Ghostland.

The film had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival on January 31, 2021. The film was released in theaters and on video on demand on September 17, 2021, by RLJE Films.

THE GOOD

If there is one thing Ted and I agree on most when it comes to the film industry, it is that Nicolas Cage is a living, breathing legend. The man has been in the business for just about forty years and throughout his illustrious career, he has done it all. He has done the comedy genre, the Oscar-bait movies, and most definitely the action genre, but for the past decade, he has become widely known for taking roles in these weird low-budget horror/thriller films. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the guy, but some of these films have been horrendous, but as of late with films like Mandy, Color Out of Space, Willy’s Wonderland, and most recently, Pig (see my full review here), a movie I think he should’ve been nominated for, he is starting to have a resurgence. With all that said, there is one movie of his that falls under that weird umbrella from the past year that I have yet to see, and that WAS Prisoners of the Ghostland. But I finally got around to watching it, so let’s just dive right into this review!

Now it wouldn’t surprise me if everybody reading this review said they had never heard of the director Sion Sono, but he is a Japanese director who has done a ton of films. However, this was his first to incorporate the English language and American actors, and I’ll be the first to say, he made the most out of it. He created this Japanese neo-Western that was also campy and fit Nicolas Cage perfectly. Sono really made this film have its own world and it was absolutely bonkers from beginning to end. And even though I didn’t agree with every decision of his, he still made something wholly original that was unlike anything we have seen before and that itself is worthy of praise.

Okay fine, I have kept you waiting long enough, so let’s talk about the main attraction, Mr. Nicolas Cage. I said the genre was a neo-Western, and that’s true, but Nicolas Cage himself serves as his own sub-genre if we are being completely honest. I will talk later in “The Bad” section about how I wanted him to have more of a presence in this film, but nonetheless, I was happy with everything I got from him and he was easily the best part of it. I didn’t think I’d say this after watching it, but he was actually really funny in this too. There were a handful of funny moments that actually made me laugh, and one was so good that I had to take a video of it and send it to Ted immediately. I won’t give too much away, and maybe this just shows how immature I am that I thought it was funny, but there’s a climactic scene where Cage just shouts “testicle” at the top of his lungs and it had me laughing hysterically. But other than me being a child, I loved his performance here, he was the only reason that I was on board with all the craziness, and I will never get tired of seeing him in films like this.

Easily the second-best thing about this film, other than Cage, were the technical elements. Technically, this film is dare I say, expertly done. The score is great. The production design is some Oscar-nomination-worthy stuff as it was all pretty nuts. The costumes were excellent, especially Cage’s character’s, and the cinematography was great thanks to the lighting throughout that featured so many different colors. All in all, this film had an excellent tone that they crafted on the technical side of things and it gave the film life.

Aside from those, the last thing I’ll bring up in this section were all the supporting performances. I mean none of them were great, but it’s just impressive to see an entire cast completely buy into such a strange concept and go all-in on their performances. For example, Bill Moseley plays the villainous governor in this, and he played his role perfectly. He was just so strange and creepy that it made his character legitimately terrifying. I also thought Sofia Boutella was pretty good in her supporting role, but similar to Cage, even though her character was the center of the plot, it still felt like she wasn’t given enough lines for a character that is so intricate to the movie. However, she made the most of everything she got, and another actress that did that was Yuzuka Nakaya as Susie. Her performance was so strange, but she played her odd character perfectly, and I absolutely loved all of her scenes.

THE BAD

This movie was enjoyable, no doubt about it, but when I look at this with a critical eye, there are a lot of problems with it. I gave props to the director for creating this world, but the world itself is just super confusing and kind of confounding. There were just so many times when I asked myself what the hell was going on. It honestly felt like it was trying to be a lot like Mad Max but those films are much simpler than this and it just didn’t get what it was going for in my opinion. I think what made it so confusing was its overwrought plot. I really think the script was what hurt this movie the most. I mean the plot contained all these backstories of how stuff happened and what needs to happen in order to get what the character is trying to get, and it was all just too much for me. But despite it giving us too much information, I was still confused at times about how things got from point A to point B, so that was frustrating.

Continuing with the writing, I honestly think it would’ve been better if the writers tried to abandon the logic when writing and not be as worried about explaining itself as it was. I just felt like they were writing this film on the fly. The movie's main focus is world-building just for the sake of it and it was so pointless. Like why? This was never going to be the next Star Wars trilogy, so why do that? It was just such a bad decision. It didn’t even pay off too because I couldn’t tell you anything specific about the world they created and it just robbed us of more Nic Cage.

I said I would talk about Cage’s limited presence in “The Bad” and here it is as that was my biggest quip with the film. As off the walls as it was, I think it could have been even even crazier if it didn’t try to take itself so seriously at times. The fact that they focused more on world-building than Cage was unfathomable. Like they literally had Nicolas Cage in this, and he was great as always, but they should’ve just let him carry the film completely and given him more crazy lines. Aside from focusing on world-building way too, they also kept showing this damn little kid to try and send the message that Cage’s character had a heart deep down and I just didn’t care about that. I want him to be fun, make jokes, and kill people in hilarious ways and that’s not what I got, and for that, I’m angry.

Another thing that brought this film down was the terrible action sequences. I mean I really hated them. It probably didn’t help that there weren’t nearly as many action sequences as I thought there would be in a film like this because they cared more about the other crap. But the main reason I watched this in the first place was just to see Nic Cage be a complete badass, and for a character that is supposed to be this notorious criminal, we didn’t even get a lot of “badassery'' from him. And when we did, it was garbage because the choreography was not good. They didn’t even make contact with people when they were fighting and the people just kind of dropped and it didn’t make any sense. I’m not kidding, Cage doesn’t really even fight anybody until almost the end of the movie. All in all, the movie set itself up so well to be that kind of movie that I wanted it to be, but it just didn’t deliver on the most basic things. Also, before finishing, to anybody who checks this out, just be prepared because this movie is so wild and one of the craziest films I’ve ever seen. The gore isn’t as bad as some other Cage films, but still, you’ve been warned.

THE VERDICT

While this movie really didn’t make any sense with how much they over-complicated things, Prisoners of the Ghostland is another film that features an unforgettable Nic Cage performance and for that reason alone, it’s worth checking out. Cage was really funny, it was visually stunning, and the other technical elements were impressive, to say the least. However, the movie spends too much time focused on world-building when it should’ve been more focused on just being a fun, bonkers movie where the main purpose is to entertain viewers.