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Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
Some cool visuals but horrible, messy story
I had high hopes for this movie. First, the cover art looked fantastic and it had a really cool name. I thought the trailer looked cool and Nicolas Cage! Cage rarely lets me down... unfortunately this was one of those rarities.
A little while ago I saw the movie Mandy also starring Cage. That movie was an experience, while I thought the first half was a bit slow and trodding, the second half kicked into high gear and was like an LSD fever dream! It was fun, it was gory and it was hyper violent, by the end I had a great time with it. I thought this was going to be similar since it had the same producers as Mandy and looked to have the same tone and feel. Once the movie began I realized pretty quickly this wasn't the same as Mandy. Mandy had an easy story to follow with a lot of cool, freaky visuals. Prisoners of the Ghost land had some cool visuals but story that seemed easy to follow but kept getting more convoluted as the movie went on.
The main story is that Nic Cage was a criminal that was let out of jail by a man called the Governor (Bill Moseley.) He wants Cage's help to find his adopted daughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) who disappeared in the mysterious, dangerous area of the Ghostland. He offers Cage his freedom if he can bring the girl back in 3 days. So Cage follows his rules he puts him in a leather suit fitted with explosives that are wired to explode if he tries to "be naughty" with her or if the time expires. It has a band on his arm that shows numbers with lights that represent the days but there are 5. The Governor says if you have her by the third day but haven't returned yet have her speak into the microphone and he'll get 2 extra days to get back. He gives Cage a car to use and we're off to the races. Fine, that seems simple enough, a rescue mission. Except the rescue mission does not last for the entire, really only the first quarter.
Yeah Cage finds the girl pretty damn quickly and easily. He walks into Samurai town, oh and by the way, who the hell knows when or where we are. I assume we're in modern times because we see smart phones but at the same time we have cowboys and samurais and Japanese geishas. One of many things that's never clearly explained. So anyway Cage enters Samurai Town and finds her there with a bunch other girls who were turned into living manicans by this weird guy in a top hat. Who is this man? Why is he turning the girls into manicans? Who knows, once again never explained. We find out Bernice is unable to speak because she was cursed when she was taken to the Ghostland. Yet a bit later on when she has to speak into the microphone when the 3 days are up so Cage doesn't explode, she puts some effort into it and what do you know, she's able to talk again. Why is she able to talk again? Did she break the curse somehow? We don't know, it's never explained. A character even outright asks her "how did you get your voice back?" They never tell you.
So at this point I'm really disappointed because this story has so many holes it's unreal it got made. Guess what, it doesn't end there. We get continuous flashbacks to an incident that happened in the opening of the film. Cage and his partner Psycho are robbing a bank and there happens to be a little boy holding a cup of gumballs (because there was a giant gumball machine in the bank, just go with it.) His partner, out of nowhere really, decides to shoot this kid. Cage tries to stop him but is not able to in time and the boy dies. Cage sees visions of this boy all through the film. What does this lead to? Absolutely nothing. What the f$!k is with this movie!? I thought for sure by the end it was going to turn out the boy was leading him to something but no he just always sees him. I'm assuming it's because he feels guilty but that's it, there's no reason given for why he sees this.
The climax of this film has to do with Cage who's seen as a hero in Samurai town because he rescued Bernice has to take her back to the Governor so he can be free. Everyone tells him they can't because to get back and they have to go through the Ghostland to get back and they'll never make it. We got a glimpse of the "soldiers" if you will of the Ghostland once before and I wasn't sure if they were ghosts or not. They seem more like mutated zombies because of an explosion that happened years before because of toxic waste. So Cage and Bernice rally the town and they're all going to march through the Ghostland as one and make it through to the other side. Let me just tell you, the make it through absolutely fine. In fact they come face to face with the ghosts, zombies, mutations, whatever the f$#k they are and find out his old partner is their leader. Cage seems happy to see him... why? Last time you were together he shot a kid and you've been doing nothing but having traumatic flashbacks to it ever since. They have some dialogue which doesn't really mean anything and basically Cage asks him to let them pass and his partner lets them. So in essence the supposed main villains of this film, the ones that are in the motherf@!king title of the movie, do absolutely goddamn NOTHING!!! I couldn't believe that and I'm getting angry again just thinking about it.
Let's wrap this up, the real battle is when they get back to the Governor who, get this is a bad guy! I was shocked, Bill Moseley who plays a villain in just about every movie he's in is a villain!? He was never going to give Cage his freedom and he orders his Samurai henchman to kill Cage. Credit where credit is due, this is finally a moment where the movie is fun. Cage vs. The Samurai is a pretty cool fight. It's not very long though and does not make up for the past hour and change of nonsense we put up with. The end sees Cage, Bernice and her friend (I didn't really talk about her but she's mostly just window dressing for the whole movie) walking off in the sunset together.
This movie is not good, despite having capable actors and striking visuals, the end result is pretty awful. The movie has so many holes in logic, questions set up and never answered and anti-climactic let downs. Despite being from the same producers Mandy is a far superior film. If you want to watch a film that's really bizarre and violent and fun, pick Mandy. It's a good movie that you can follow, while at the same time going through an acid trip of weird visuals and bloody fights. I feel like Prisoners of the Ghostland tried to do the same thing but it failed. It has weird visuals but added nothing to the story and the story itself got so messy as the movie went on that it was almost impossible to follow.
Sorry Nic, 9 times out of 10 you're a winner for me. This was not, this is one ride with the Cage-man you don't want to go on.
Shadowzone (1990)
Enjoyable but kinda boring...
I just watched Shadowzone for the first time tonight and as a big fan of horror/monster movies and B-movies in general I was looking forward to it. What I thought this was going to be was a big low budget monster movie, where a science experiment goes awry and everyone needs to escape to hope to survive. And that's kinda what it is ... but there are A LOT of slow moving scenes of nothing but people talking.
It's not like I would be even mad at that except for the fact that it's not what we're promised on the cover of the DVD! On the cover we see a picture of some alien-ish looking monster wearing a tattered lab coat so we can assume that would what happens to James Hong's character Dr. Van Fleet. But it isn't ... no we never see such a character and Hong's character doesn't transform into anything. In fact for a movie that puts the monster front and center on the cover we hardly ever see it and when we do it's just little 5 second glimpses. And I thought maybe it's going the route of the big reveal in the climax and then we'll see it on screen for a decent amount of time? No! Not even then, in the final act of the film we finally see it up close and can it's entire body but it's only on screen for about 2 minutes. It looks cool, you can definitely tell it's low budget but that's ok but it barely gets any screen time. That was a major disappointment for me I was ready to see the monster I was promised on the cover but never saw it.
What saved this movie from being a total snoozefest we're the characters. James Hong is always fun to see, we have his female assistant who for some reason is always putting chapstick on, the other hot bombshell blonde scientist, a black guy who's a computer whiz, a fat, smoking female cook who used to run a whorehouse and a hillbilly maintenance man named Shivers. Also our main protagonist the Nasa investigator played by David Beecroft who out of all the characters is unfortunately the most boring. He just has no personality whatsoever, he never seems bothered when anyone dies and mostly all he does is stand around and ask questions. He doesn't really even figure anything out, it's all the people around him that do all the work, clearly he should not have been the main focus. All the other characters have quirks and funny attitudes that when they play off each other is entertaining to watch.
Other than that there's really not much to this movie, the ending is a pretty big anti-climax. It doesn't really end it just sorta stops. It's as if the film makers said "well that's all we really had so we're done, the end." Again if this movie put it's focus on the monster instead of endless scenes about the science experiments, if Hong is a bad guy or good guy, what's going on in the facility, a weird dream sequence that didn't really make a whole lot of sense, animals ... because they were testing on animals before, I think. Yeah it just got so boring and you so don't care, I just wanted to see the monster come out and rip people to shreds. People do get ripped to shreds ... offscreen! Yeah we don't really see much, it's mostly just blood splatters and then cut to the aftermath again with a few 2 second glimpses of the monster.
One more thing I really didn't get is why is a Nasa investigator there? This had nothing at all to do with space travel. The scientists were conducting experiments having to do with sleep. The experiment was honestly kinda hard to follow, a person in a glass tube slept and somehow through some sceince/techno babble a portal to another dimension the "Shadowzone" was opened up and the monster came out through their body. It was a bit confusing to follow but a monster came from another dimension, how doesn't really matter. Anyway this Nasa scientist doesn't even look like he works for Nasa, he looks like a marine more than anything else. He has dog tags around his neck and never once even mentions Nasa, all they say is he's from there. Which on a sidenote, Nasa has investigators?
All in all if you like corny, shlock sci-fi horror or the movies of Full Moon pictures you'll like this. For me I do like both of those but this one was just a bit to slow and not enough monster. I did really enjoy some parts of it though which is why I can't say it was a total let down. The cinematography is nice, it builds a decent atmosphere around the characters, builds up suspense well and has a very nice B-movie horror theme song.
Shadowzone is definitely a movie to make fun of while you're watching. Gather up a few friends and some beers and you'll have an enjoyable time with it.