Prisoners of the Ghostland is a weird Samurai/Western action film starring Nicholas Cage. This should be a fun combination but I think the film is simply trying too hard. It has a manufactured artificial level of weirdness instead of being a weird film where the weirdness feels organic to the manic mind that made it.

The film is set in a vaguely defined post-collapse or post-war or post-something future where Cage is a bank robber in, I guess, Japan. His last job goes south and he imprisoned but then brought before The Governor of a Western-themed theme park (or something). He’s tasked with retrieving/rescuing/kidnapping a valuable prisoner (played by Sofia Boutello) from The Ghostland. Or something.

This is a deranged movie but not in a way that felt authentic. I don’t know why, but it felt to me like they set out to make a cult film but didn’t go through the hard work of having a unique vision. There’s surely weird things going on here but it felt weird for the sake of being weird. It was hollow, artificial. Inauthentic.

And it isn’t helped by a rather pedestrian plot with pretty mediocre action scenes. I’d like to blame Nicholas Cage for just not being capable of pulling off the kung-fu and the gun-fu, but I don’t think anyone comes off well. Or maybe it’s just flabby direction that doesn’t liven up some rote and boring action.

Yes, Nicholas Cage does have a couple of opportunities to get hammy and yes its the usual Cage freakout stuff. But he’s so surrounded by other weirdness, he almost seems mellow in comparison. He does get to wear the dumbest looking leather outfit with blinking lights… I guess that’s meant to be funny. Since, if it was meant to look cool, mission not accomplished.

This was a desperate try to gin up a cult film. This movie should watch Malignant if it wants to see a masterclass in going nuts and earning it. As is, it’s just another late stage Nicholas Cage movie where Nicholas Cage gets to live out whatever gonzo dreams he had as a child. Or earn a paycheck. Whichever.

Score: 64