Review: PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND (2021)

Sofia Boutella as Bernice and Nicolas Cage as Hero from the action/adventure film, PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films.

There’s a moment where Nicolas Cage is howling in pain in Sion Sono’s new film, PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND, that made me think of Jeffrey Dahmer.

…I should expand on that.

In Marc Myers’ 2017 film MY FRIEND DAHMER (based on the autobiographical graphic novel by John Backderf), Jeffrey Dahmer’s high school years saw him become a pseudo mascot for the class clowns as he would act up and act out in bizarre manners. It seemed Dahmer appreciated the attention, even if it rode the line between laughing with and simply at him. But soon he was expected to always be on and thus had to act accordingly. His fans pushed him to fill out a very specific niche, and they be damned if he didn’t…but also they’d quickly grow bored with it and walk away (and no one ever heard of Jeffrey Dahmer again).

Both Cage and Sono have been branded as “crazy” artists—that is to say seen as extreme types that incorporate odd choices into their creations that few could anticipate and no one would ever consider “realistic” (or subdued).

But that’s not totally the case. If literally nothing else in an expanse 40 year career, 2021’s PIG shows how Cage is capable of outlandish types but played with a lot of restraint and subtlety (in truth a fair number of the titles in his filmography speak to this). Sono is also someone who has developed a reputation for extremity.

TOKYO TRIBE, WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?, LOVE & PEACE, Tokyo Vampire Hotel, and many many more titles show a filmmaker who loves outsized characters making massive moves against a technicolor backdrop of excess. But in each of those works, no matter how “crazy” things get, there is always a level of humanity and realism that is smuggled in amongst the flashier imagery and ultraviolence. PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND, written by Aaron Hendrie and Reza Sixo Safai, boasts a ton of good elements that include strong performances, exquisite set/production design, impressively staged action sequences, intriguing mythology, and gorgeous shots. But the movie never feels like it comes together into one cohesive work, often times due to the “y’know what would be cool?” style of throwing a kitchen sink at a screenplay and relying on Cage and Sono to play to their expected personas that feels forced and alienating as opposed to a more earned sense of lunacy.

In a wasteland future, The Governor (Bill Moseley) tasks jailed bank thief/murder accomplice Hero (Nic Cage) with finding and retrieving his beloved “granddaughter”, Bernice (Sofia Boutella). Under the cloak of night, Bernice and two of her friends escaped from The Governor’s territory and are now in a nearby area called the Ghostland because it’s cursed with vengeful spirits. The Governor’s right-hand badass Yasujiro (Tak Sakaguchi) must stay with his master, and Hero can’t be trusted; so they rig him with an outfit full of explosives should the convict try to escape, fail to bring in Bernice, or attempts to have sexual relations with her. Hero goes out to the Ghostland and finds a people desperately stuck out of time, haunted by a disastrous past and their own fears, with their own bizarre rituals and cliques. Hero must find Bernice, grapple with the fallout from his failed robberies with Psycho (Nick Cassavetes), and figure out his role in liberating or destroying the people back in The Governor’s territory.

PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND is a film perfect for slicing and dicing—and not because of the many katana swords at play. Hendrie and Safai’s script meshes up a post-apocalyptic world, with the Western, the samurai film, and a touch of horror that feels one spaceship away from essentially blending and distilling all of Shinichirō Watanabe’s filmography into one title. That eclectic mix gives ample opportunity for Sono, DP Sôhei Tanikawa, and production designer Toshihiro Isomi to create gorgeous sets, costumes, and sequences that also is a mash-up of the ancient, with the present, and the destroyed future. Combined with some dedicated actors delivering big performances as overly quirky characters, and PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND can now work as five minute chunks here and there. A few stills, like on this page, a couple of sequences and it seems crazy and ambitious and intriguing. And it is those things…just not especially cohesive or successfully emotionally engaging.

As mentioned, Cage and Sono have both attained reputations (fairly or not) for being “crazy” filmmakers and while it doesn’t feel like an act—there’s nothing in the movie that suggests either isn’t sincere in their approach to the material—it feels like indulging in those expectations. Sono delivers that blending of high and low art, different cultures and genres, along with lots of violent and ephemeral sense of reality (or morality), but they don’t come together as anything more than pretty cool moments or ideas. Cage is screaming, delivering a yell in pain at one point in a high pitched register that seems unlikely to have ever been done previously, along with his thousand yard stare that suggests he’s seen the face of God…but there’s not enough depth to the character to make Hero emotional engaging or truly interesting to audiences. The many (specific and oblique) references to MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME, HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN, HIGH NOON, SIX-STRING SAMURAI, HIGHWAY TO HELL, THE WIZ, OBLIVION, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, BRAZIL, ZATOICHI CHALLENGED, SHANE, and more are fun and cleverly integrated (especially as more than a few of those titles are rarely mentioned outside of film nerd circles) but again don’t do anything to elevate the story or deepen its impact.

(L-R) Tak Sakaguchi as Yasujiro and Bill Moseley as Governor in PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films.

But again, that’s not to say PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND is bad because there are multiple scenes that are exceptionally conceived and executed by all involved and will end up in compilations down the line or becoming out-of-context memes, or perhaps even influencing their own genre mishmash movies in years to come. Cage is still transfixing to watch, but the lack of character (beyond the cliched backstory) means it’s constantly waiting for some cathartic release that never occurs. Also, after this and TENET on top of decades of other titles that use the same gimmick—no more films with characters cleverly named “hero”, “protagonist”, or whatever. We get it, it never works, please stop.

The plot vacillates between being an obscure journey that feels underdeveloped and an obvious path that perfunctorily checks off everything it set up previously and everything you expect to happen with certain characters and relationships.

When did Nick Cassavetes turn into The Undertaker? The director of THE NOTEBOOK was always a great villain in movies like THE WRAITH and QUIET COOL, and even his appearance in THE HANGOVER PART II just ten years ago was basically the same appearance of a guy albeit in more leather and fake tattoos. But in PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND, the dude is practically unrecognizable and a hulking brute. It’s not a detriment, merely a surprising development that seems to have occurred in real life in the past decade.

Boutella invests a lot of genuine emotion into her character and elicits audience investment, but her plan is murky and role outside of catalyst for a few different events is fairly diminished. Meanwhile, Moseley turns in his usual enjoyable but far too broad cornpoke performance, which the rest of the townsfolk and his lackeys are more than happy to imitiate.

PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND will be a great bar movie that plays in the background with people’s eyes catching glances of some gorgeous shots of wild set-pieces built around anarchically beautiful designs. Those snippets will stay with them, and indeed there are scenes that will stay with viewers for a long time afterwards. But this chimera (and yes, there is a character who just happens to be named that as well) of a film feels too choppy and without enough genuine soul to resonate as an entire, cohesive film. There are dull stretches and repetitive scenes, and the attitude and feeling of one chapter abuts awkwardly against the next to make it jarring in a way that isn’t confrontational or engaging but like someone “completed” a jigsaw puzzle by forcing the pieces from three different puzzles. The resulting film, PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND, is one jagged rectangle that’s full of of sound and fury, but signifies very little at all.

PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films.