With football season in full swing now and the day-to-day stuff that comes with maintaining a website and podcast, I’m certainly behind the curve on keeping up with the movie reviews. However, I’ve still been seeing as much as I can and will try to do what I can to keep up. That said, Prisoners of the Ghostland is a bold, incredibly colorful, and wonderfully imaginative amalgam of spaghetti western, feudal Japan, and dystopian apocalypse.
There’s quite a lot going on here so it’s tough to nail it all down smoothly but director Sion Sono doesn’t ease new audiences into this one. He is a visionary filmmaker for a reason and credit to him for making big, ambitious stylistic choices and sticking to them. The world he built is wild and compelling, even though you’re just dropped into the middle of it with little context. You can’t help but want to know more and that’s always just out of reach. There’s so much to take in, I can’t help but wonder if this idea would maybe find its sweet spot as a show or mini-series, but I still appreciate all the work and subtleties that went into designing it.
Toshihiro Isomi’s production design is ridiculously fun and reminds me of Takashi Miike’s Tsukiyaki Western Django mixed with Mad Max. Chieko Matsumoto must have had a blast coming up with the costume designs because there are so many different visual aesthetics at play, especially in the Ghostland. Each group of characters is distinct and has a clearly identifiable style. The cinematography by Sôhei Tanikawa is incredible too. His framing and understanding of backlighting elevated and showcased all the design choices beautifully.
Nicolas Cage always does weird stuff and this role is one where he’s not exactly the hero of the story. He plays a semi-notorious criminal who’s been locked up for a long time and is released on the condition of rescuing the Governor’s granddaughter. He’s fun to watch, but you aren’t cheering for him to win here and it’s clear that he enjoys these kinds of roles. Cage thrives in eccentric spaces and you’s be hard-pressed to find a space more eccentric than this one. There’s also a kind of”man-out-of-time” element to the character and he’s never short on charisma, so you should have as much fun with it as he did.
Sofia Boutella is the sympathetic one here, as she plays the granddaughter who’s been trapped in the Ghostland. It’s interesting to watch the two of them work together towards the same goal even though their characters are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The Governor is played with extra slime by longtime Rob Zombie collaborator, Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects‘, House of 1000 Corpses). He fine-tunes his performance to zero in on all the right things to hate about his character but still does it with panache. Tak Sakaguchi is one of the best characters in the film, Yasujiro, pulled between his honor and his sworn loyalty. He’s one that I would love to know more about. Nick Cassavetes also has a fun and completely crazy role as Cage’s ex-partner, appropriately names, Psycho.
This movie is totally crazy and all over the place with its influences and styles, but that’s a big part of its charm. The world-building is excellent even though the budget couldn’t have been that big, and it could really thrive if the idea were developed into a series.
Recommendation: It’s not going to be for everyone, but see it for the creativity and wide-ranging style. Stay for the off-the-wall performances.
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